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THE    TWO    PATHS 


THE   TWO   PATHS 


lECTUKES  ON  kRi, 


AND  ITS  APPLICATION  TO 


DECORATION  AND  MANUFACTURR, 


DELIVEItED    IN    18  58-9. 


BY  JOHN  RUSKIN,  M.A., 

ArTHCB  OF   "MODSBN    FAINTKU.S,"    "STKNES   OK    VENICE,"    "SKVKN    LAMPH   OF    ASIlHrTEC- 
TUKK,"    '•  EI.KMKNTS   OK     DKAWINQ,"    ETa 


SHitb  flatcs  ;inb  dfiiU. 


NEW   YORK: 

JOHN    WILEY   AND   SONS, 

5:5  East  Tenth  Stkkkt, 

Second  iluor  west  ufBruudway. 

1891. 


^^  Carton  (pttBB 

171,  173  Macdougal  Street,  New  York 


AH1» 


N 


74  4  5^ 
PREFACE 


Tar  following  aildresses,  though  spoken  at  different  times,  are  in  ten 
tionally  connected  in  subject;  their  aim  being  to  set  one  or  two  main 
principles  of  art  in  simple  light  before  the  general  student,  and  to  indi- 
OfSite  their  practical  bearing  on  modern  design.  The  law  which  it  haa 
been  ray  effort  oniefly  to  illustrate  is  the  dependence  of  all  noble  design, 
in  any  kind,  on  the  sculpture  or  painting  of  Organic  Form. 

This  is  the  vital  law ;  lying  at  the  root  of  all  that  I  have  ever  tried 
to  teach  respecting  architecture  or  any  other  art.  It  is  also  the  law 
most  generally  disallowed. 

I  believe  this  must  be  so  in  every  subject.  We  are  all  of  us  willing 
enough  to  accept  dead  truths  or  blunt  ones ;  which  can  be  fitted  harm- 
lessly into  spare  niches,  or  shrouded  and  coffined  at  once  out  of  tlie 
way  we  holding  complacently  the  cemetery  keys,  and  supposing  we 
nave  learned  something.  But  a  sapling  truth,  with  earth  at  its  root 
and  blossom  on  its  branches ;  or  a  trenchant  truth,  that  can  cut  its  way 
through  bars  and  sods ;  most  men,  it  seems  to  me,  dislike  the  sight  oi 
entertAinment  of,  if  by  any  means  such  guest  or  vision  may  be  avoided 


vi  PREFACE. 

And,  indeed,  this  is  no  wonder  for  one  such  truth,  tl  loroughly  accepted 
connects  itaclf  strangely  with  others,  and  there  is  no  saying  what  it 
may  lead  us  tx). 

And  thus  the  gist  of  what  I  have  tried  to  ^each  about  architector« 
bas  been  throughout  denied  by  my  architect  readers,  even  when  they 
thought  what  I  said  suggestive  in  other  particulars.  "Anything  bu. 
that.  Study  Itahan  Gotliic  ?— perliaps  it  would  be  as  well :  build  with 
pointed  arches  ?— there  is  no  objection :  use  solid  stone  and  well-burnl 
brit^k  ? — by  all  means :  but — learn  to  carve  or  paint  organic  form  our- 
selves !  How  can  such  a  thing  be  asked  ?  We  are  above  all  that 
The  carvers  and  painters  are  our  servants — quite  subordinate  people 
They  ought  to  be  glad  if  we  leave  room  for  them." 

Well :  on  that  it  all  turns.  For  those  who  will  not  learn,  to  carve  o» 
paint,  and  think  themselves  greater  men  because  they  cannot,  it  i3 
wholly  wasted  time  to  read  any  words  of  mine ;  in  the  truest  and 
sternest  sense  they  can  read  no  words  of  mine ;  for  the  most  familiar 
[  can  use— "form,"  "proportion,"  "beauty,"  "curvature,"  "colour"— 
are  used  in  a  sense  which  by  no  effort  I  can  communicate  to  such 
readers ;  and  in  no  building  that  I  praise,  is  the  thing  that  I  praise  il 
for,  visible  to  them. 

And  it  is  the  more  necessary  for  me  to  state  this  fully ;  becaufe 
"o-called  Gothic  or  Romanesque  buildings  are  now  rising  every  day 
around  us,  which  might  be  supposed  by  the  public  more  or  less  to  em- 
body the  principles  of  those  styles,  but  which  embody  not  one  of  the.Ti, 
oor  any  shadow  or  fragment  of  them ;  but  merely  servo  t-'  caricatur* 
the  noble  buildings  of  past  ages,  and  to  bring  their  fo'TU  IdIm  dishonom 
t>y  leaving  out  their  souL 


PREFACE.  yn 

The  following  addresses  are  therefore  arranged,  as  I  liave  just  stated, 
to  put  this  great  law,  and  one  or  two  collateral  ones,  in  less  mistakeable 
light,  securing  even  in  this  irregular  form  at  least  clearness  of  assertion. 
For  the  rest,  the  question  at  issue  is  not  one  to  be  decided  by  argu- 
ment, but  by  experiment,  which  if  the  reader  is  disinclined  to  mak«. 
all  demonstration  must  be  useless  to  him. 

The  lectures  are  for  the  most  part  printed  as  they  were  read,  mend- 
ing only  obscure  sentences  here  and  there.  The  parts  which  were 
trusted  to  extempore  speaking  are  supplied,  as  well  as  I  can  remember 
(only  with  an  addition  here  and  there  of  things  I  forgot  to  say),  in  the 
words,  or  at  least  the  kind  of  words,  used  at  the  time ;  and  they  con- 
tam,  at  all  events,  the  substance  of  what  I  said  more  accurately  than 
hurried  journal  reports.  I  must  beg  my  readers  not  in  general  to  trust 
to  such,  for  even  in  fast  speaking  I  try  to  use  words  carefully ;  and  any 
alteration  of  expression  will  sometimes  involve  a  great  alteration  in 
meaumg.  A  Uttle  while  ago  I  had  to  speak  of  an  architectural  design. 
and  called  it  "  elegant,"  meaning,  founded  on  good  and  v?ell  "  elected" 
models;  the  printed  report  gave  "excellent"  design  (that  is  to  say, 
design  excellingly  good),  which  I  did  not  mean,  and  should,  even  in  the 
most  hurried  speaking,  never  have  said. 

The  illustrations  of  the  lectr:re  on  iron  were  sketches  made  too  roughly 
to  be  engraved,  and  yet  of  too  elaborate  subjects  to  allow  of  my  draw- 
ing them  completely.  Those  now  substituted  will,  however,  answer 
the  purpose  nearly  as  well,  and  are  more  directly  connected  with  the 
subjects  of  the  preceding  lectures;  so  that  I  hope  throughout  the 
folume  the  student  will  perceive  an  insistance  upon  one  main  truth, 
nor  lose  in  any  minor  direction  of  inquiry  the  sense  of  tlie  responsi- 


Vm  PREFACE. 

bility  which  the  acceptance  of  that  truth  fastens  upon  him ;  responsi- 
bUity  for  choice,  decisive  and  conclusive,  between  two  modes  of  study 
which  involve  ultimately  the  development,  or  deadening,  of  every 
power  he  possesses.  I  have  tried  to  hold  that  choice  clearly  out  to 
him,  and  to  unveil  for  him  to  its  farthest  the  issue  of  his  turning  to  the 
right  hand  or  the  left.  Guides  he  may  find  many,  and  aids  many ;  but 
all  these  will  be  in  vain  unless  he  has  first  recognised  the  hour  and  the 
point  of  life  when  the  way  divides  itself,  one  way  leading  to  the  Olive 
mountains — one  to  the  vale  of  the  Salt  Sea.  There  are  few  cross 
roads,  that  I  know  of,  from  one  to  the  ether.  Let  hiia  pause  6t  thd 
portiDg  or  Tub  two  PiiTHA 


CONTENTS. 


Lectcre   I.     The    Deteriorative   Power  of   Conventional   Art  nve» 

Nations, 11 

Lecture  II     Tlie  Unity  of  Art, 6S 

Lecture  III.     Modorn  Manufacture  and  Desif^n,        ...  78 

Lecture   IV.     The  Influence  of  Imagination  in  Architecture,    .  115 

Lecture   V.     The  Work  of  Iron,  in  Nature,  Art,  and  Policj,    .  161 

APPPNDICKa, .  201 


TBE     TWO     PATHS. 


LECTURE  I, 


FHE  DETEiW  *RATIVE  POWER  OF  CONVENTIONAL  ART  OVBH 

NATIONS. 

AN   INAUGURAL    LECTURE. 

Delivered  at  the  Kensington  Museum,*  Janvary,  1858. 

As  I  passed,  last  summer,  for  the  first  time,  through  the 
north  of  Scotland,  it  seemed  to  me  that  there  was  a  peculiar 
painfulness  in  its  scenery,  caused  by  the  non -manifestation 
of  the  powers  of  human  art.  I  had  never  travelled  in,  noi 
even  heard  or  conceived  of  such  a  country  before ;  nor, 
though  I  had  passed  much  of  my  life  amidst  mountain 

*  A  few  introductory  words,  in  which,  at  the  opening  of  this  lec- 
ture, I  thanked  the  Chairman  (Mr.  Cockerell),  for  his  support  on  the 
tKXJasion,  and  asked  his  pardon  for  any  hasty  expressions  in  my  writ- 
ings, which  might  have  seemed  discourteous  towards  him,  or  other 
artihitects  whose  general  opinions  were  opposed  to  mine,  may  be  found 
by  those  who  care  for  preambles,  not  much  misreported,  in  the  Build- 
ing Chronicle ;  with  such  comments  as  the  genius  of  that  journal  was 
likelj  to  3-igge3t  to  it. 


12  DETERIORATIVE   TOWER   OF  [LECT.  I 

Bcenerj  in  the  south,  was  I  before  aware  how  much  of  its 
charm  depended  on  the  little  gracefulnesses  and  tender- 
nesses of  human  work,  which  are  mingled  with  the  beauty  of 
the  Alps,  or  spared  by  their  desolation.  It  is  true  that  the 
art  which  carves  and  colours  the  front  of  a  Swiss  cottage  ii^ 
not  of  any  very  exalted  kind;  yet  it  testifies  to  the  complete 
ness  and  the  delicacy  of  the  faculties  of  the  mountaineer 
it  is  true  that  the  remnants  of  tower  and  battlement,  which 
afford  footing  to  the  wild  vine  on  the  Alpine  promontory, 
form  but  a  small  part  of  the  great  serration  of  its  rocks ; 
and  yet  it  is  just  that  fragment  of  their  broken  outline 
which  gives  them  their  pathetic  power,  and  historical 
majesty.  And  this  element  among  the  wilds  of  our  own 
country  I  found  wholly  wanting.  The  Highland  cottage 
is  literally  a  heap  of  gray  stones,  choked  up,  rather  than 
roofed  over,  with  black  peat  and  withered  heather;  the 
only  approach  to  an  effort  a'  decoration  consists  in  the 
placing  of  the  clods  of  protective  peat  obliquely  op  'ts  roof, 
30  as  to  give  a  diagonal  arrangement  of  lines,  looking  some- 
what as  if  the  surface  had  been  scored  over  by  a  gigantic 
jlaymore. 

And,  at  least  among  the  northern  hills  of  Scotland,  ele- 
ments of  more  ancient  architectural  interest  are  equally 
absent.  The  solitary  peel-house  is  hardly  discernible  by 
i.hc  windings  of  the  stream  ;  the  roofless  aisle  of  the  priory 
8  lost  among  the  enclosures  of  the  village ;  and  the  capita! 
;ity  of  the  Highlands,  Inverness,  placed  where  it  might 


LECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  13 

ennoble  one  of  the  sweetest  landscapes,  and  by  the  shore  of 
one  of  the  loveliest  estuaries  in  the  world ; — placed  between 
«.he  crests  of  the  Grampians  and  the  flowing  of  the  Moray 
Firth,  as  if  it  were  a  jewel  clasping  the  folds  of  the  moun- 
tains to  the  blue  zone  of  the  sea, — ^is  only  distinguishable 
from  a  distance  by  one  architectural  feature,  and  exalts  all 
the  surrounding  landscape  by  no  other  associations  than 
those  which  can  be  connected  with  its  modern  castellated 
gaol. 

While  these  conditions  of  Scottish  scenery  affected  me 
very  painfully,  it  being  the  first  time  in  my  life  that  I  had 
been  in  any  country  possessing  no  valuable  monuments  or 
examples  of  art,  they  also  forced  me  into  the  consideration 
of  one  or  two  difficult  questions  respecting  the  effect  of  art 
on  the  human  mind ;  and  they  forced  these  questions  upon 
me  eminently  for  this  reason,  that  while  I  was  wandering 
disconsolately  among  the  moors  of  the  Grampians,  where 
there  was  no  art  to  be  found,  news  of  peculiar  interest  were 
every  day  arriving  from  a  country'  where  there  was  a  great 
deal  of  art,  and  art  of  a  delicate  kind,  to  be  found.  Among 
the  models  set  before  you  in  this  institution,  and  in  the 
others  established  throughout  the  kingdom  for  the  teaching 
of  design,  there  are,  I  suppose,  none  in  their  kind  more 
admirable  than  the  decorated  works  of  India.  They  are. 
indeed,  in  all  materials  capable  of  colour,  wool,  marble,  or 
metal,  almost  inimitable  in  their  delicate  application  of 
divided  hue,  and  fine  arrangement  of  fantastic  line.     'Noi 


14  DETERIORATIVE   POWER   OP  [liBJT.  1 

is  this  power  of  theirs  exerted  by  the  people  rarely,  oi 
without  enjoyment ;  the  love  of  subtle  design  seems  uni- 
versal in  the  race,  and  is  developed  in  every  implement 
that  they  shape,  and  every  building  that  they  raise ;  il 
attaches  itself  with  the  same  intensity,  and  with  the  samp 
success,  to  the  service  of  superstition,  of  pleasure  or  of 
cruelty ;  and  enriches  alike,  with  one  profusion  of  encha.nted 
iridescence,  the  dome  of  the  pagoda,  the  fringe  of  the  girdle, 
and  the  edge  of  the  sword. 

So  then  you  have,  in  these  two  great  populations,  Indian 
and  Highland — in  the  races  of  the  jungle  and  of  the  moor 
-  -two  national  capacities  distinctly  and  accurately  opposed. 
On  the  one  side  you  have  a  race  rejoicing  in  ^rt,  and 
eminently  and  universally  endowed  with  the  gift  of  it;  on 
the  other  you  have  a  people  careless  of  art,  and  apparently 
incapable  of  it,  their  utmost  effort  hitherto  reaching  no 
farther  than  to  the  variation  of  the  positions  of  the  bars  of 
colour  in  square  chequers.  And  we  are  thus  urged 
naturally  to  enquire  what  is  the  effect  on  the  moral 
character,  in  each  nation,  of  this  vast  difference  in  their 
pursuits  and  apparent  capacities  ?  and  whether  those  rude 
chequers  of  the  tartan,  or  the  exquisitely  fancied  involu- 
tions of  the  Cashmere,  fold  habitually  over  the  noblest 
hearts  ?  We  have  had  our  answer.  Since  the  race  of  man 
began  its  course  of  sin  on  this  earth,  nothing  has  ever  been 
done  bv  it  so  significative  of  all  bestial,  and  lower  than 
bestial  degradation,  as  the  acts  of  the  Indian  race  in  the 


LECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL  ART.  15 

year  that  has  just  passed  by.  Cruelty  as  fierce  may  indeed 
have  been  wreaked,  and  brutality  as  abominable  been 
practised  before,  but  never  under  like  circumstances ;  rage 
of  prolonged  war,  and  resentment  of  prolonged  oppression, 
have  made  men  as  cruel  before  now ;  and  gradual  decline 
mto  barbarism,  where  no  examples  of  decency  or  civiliza- 
tion existed  around  them,  has  sunk,  before  now,  isolated 
populations  to  the  lowest  level  of  possible  humanity.  But 
cruelty  stretched  to  its  fiercest  against  the  gentle  and  un- 
offending, and  corruption  festered  to  its  loathsomest  in  the 
midst  of  the  witnessing  presence  of  a  disciplined  civiliza- 
tion,— these  we  could  not  have  known  to  be  within  the 
practicable  compass  of  human  guilt,  but  for  the  acts  of  the 
Indian  mutineer.  And,  as  thus,  on  the  one  hand,  you  have 
an  extreme  energy  of  baseness  displayed  by  these  lovers 
of  art;  on  the  other, — as  if  to  put  the  question  into  the 
narrowest  compass — you  have  had  an  extreme  energy  of 
virtue  displayed  by  the  despisers  of  art.  Among  all  the 
soldiers  to  whom  you  owe  your  victories  in  the  Crimea, 
and  your  avenging  in  the  Indies,  to  none  are  you  bound 
by  closer  bonds  of  gratitude  than  to  the  men  who  have 
been  born  and  bred  among  those  desolate  Highland  moors. 
And  thus  you  have  the  differences  in  capacity  and  circum- 
itanee  between  the  two  nations,  and  the  differences  in  result 
)n  tlie  moral  habits  of  two  nations,  put  into  the  most 
significant — the  most  palpable — the  most  brief  opposition. 
Out  of  the  peat  cottage  come  faith,  courage,  self-sacrifice 


16  DETERIORATIVE    TOWER   OF  [LEOT.  1 

purity,  and  i>icty,  and  whatever  else  is  fruitful  in  the  work 
of  Heaven ;  out  of  the  ivory  palace  come  treachery 
cruelty,  cowardice,  idolatry,  bestiality, — whatever  else  ii 
fruitful  in  the  work  of  Hell. 

But  the  difficulty  does  not  close  here.  From  one 
instance,  of  however  great  apparent  force,  it  would  be 
wholly  unfair  to  gather  any  general  conclusion — wholly 
illogical  to  assert  that  because  we  had  once  found  love  of 
art  connected  with  moral  baseness,  the  love  of  art  must  be 
the  general  root  of  moral  baseness ;  and  equally  unfair  to 
assert  that,  because  we  had  once  found  neglect  of  art  coin- 
cident with  nobleness  of  disposition,  neglect  of  art  must  be 
always  the  source  or  sign  of  that  nobleness.  But  if  we 
pass  from  the  Indian  peninsula  into  other  countries  of  the 
globe ;  and  from  our  own  recent  experience,  to  the  records 
of  history,  we  shall  still  find  one  great  fact  fronting  us,  in 
stern  universality — namely,  the  apparent  connection  ol 
great  success  in  art  with  subsequent  national  degradation. 
You  find,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  nations  which  possess- 
ed a  refined  art  were  always  subdued  by  those  who 
possessed  none :  you  find  the  Lydian  subdued  by  the 
Mode ;  the  Athenian  by  the  Spartan  ;  the  Greek  by  the 
Roman ;  the  Roman  by  the  Goth  ;  the  Burgundian  by  the 
Switzer :  but  you  find,  beyond  this — that  even  where  no 
attack  by  any  external  power  has  accelerated  the  catastro- 
phe of  the  state,  the  period  in  which  any  given  people 
reach  their  highest  power  in  art  is  precisely  that  in  wind? 


LECT.  l]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  17 

thej  appear  to  sign  the  warrant  of  tlieir  own  ruin  ;  and 
that,  from  the  moment  in  which  a  perfect  statue  appears 
in  Florence,  a  perfect  picture  in  Venice,  or  a  perfect  fresco 
in  Rome,  from  that  hour  forward,  probity,  industry,  and 
courage  seem  to  be  exiled  from  their  walls,  and  they  perish 
in  a  sculpturesque  paralysis,  or  a  many-coloured  corrup- 
tion. 

But  even  this  is  not  all.  As  art  seems  thus,  in  its  deli- 
cate form,  to  be  one  of  the  chief  promoters  of  indolence 
and  sensuality, — so,  I  need  hardly  remind  you,  it  hitherto 
has  appeared  only  in  energetic  manifestation  when  it  was  in 
the  service  of  superstition.  The  four  greatest  manifesta- 
tions of  human  intellect  which  founded  the  four  principal 
kingdoms  of  art,  Egyptian,  Babylonian,  Greek,  and  Italian, 
were  developed  by  the  strong  excitement  of  active  super- 
stition in  the  worship  of  Osiris,  Belus,  Minerva,  and  the 
Queen  of  Heaven.  Therefore,  to  speak  briefly,  it  may  ap 
pear  very  difficult  to  show  that  art  has  ever  yet  existed  in  a 
Ljonsistent  and  thoroughly  energetic  school,  unless  it  wa." 
engaged  in  the  propagation  of  falsehood,  or  the  encourage- 
ment of  vice 

And  finally,  while  art  has  thus  shown  itself  always  active 
ill  the  service  of  luxury  and  idolatry,  it  has  also  been 
Bt'ongly  directed  to  the  exaltation  of  cruelty.  A  nation 
which  lives  a  pastoral  and  innocent  life  never  decorates  the 
shepherd's  staff  or  the  plough-handle,  but  races  who  live 
by  depredation  and   slaughter  nearly  always  bestow  ex 


18  DETERIOKATIVE   POWER   OP  [LECT.  1 

quisite  ornaments  on  the  quiver,  the  helmet,  and  the 
spear. 

Does  it  not  seem  to  you,  then,  on  all  these  three  coimts, 
more  than  questionable  whether  we  are  assembled  here  in 
Kensington  museum  to  any  good  purpose  ?  Might  we  not 
justly  be  looked  upon  with  suspicion  and  fear,  rather  than 
with  sympathy,  by  the  innocent  and  unartistical  public  ? 
.  Are  we  even  sure  of  ourselves?  Do  we  know  what  we  are 
about  ?  Are  we  met  here  as  honest  people  ?  or  are  we  not 
rather  so  many  Catilines  assembled  to  devise  the  hasty  de- 
gradation of  our  country,  or,  like  a  conclave  of  midnight 
witches,  to  summon  and  send  forth,  on  new  and  unexpect- 
ed missions,  the  demons  of  luxury,  cruelty,  and  -  supersti- 
tion? 

I  trust,  upon  the  whole,  that  it  is  not  so  :  I  am  sure  that 
Mr.  Redgrave  and  Mr.  Cole  do  not  at  all  include  results  of 
this  kind  in  their  conception  of  the  ultimate  objects  of  the 
institution  which  owes  so  much  to  their  strenuous  and  well- 
directed  exertions.  And  I  have  put  this  painful  question 
before  you,  only  that  we  may  face  it  thoroughly,  and,  as  I 
hope,  out-face  it.  If  you  will  give  it  a  little  sincere  atten- 
tion this  evening,  I  trust  we  may  find  sufficiently  good  rea- 
sons for  our  work,  and  proceed  to  it  hereafter,  as  all  good 
workmen  should  do,  with  clear  heads,  and  calm  consciences 

To  return,  then,  to  the  first  point  of  difficulty,  the  rela- 
tions between  art  and  mental  disposition  in  India  and  Scot- 
land.    It  is  quite  true  that  the  art  of  India  is  delicate  and 


LECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL  ART.  19 

refined.  But  it  has  one  curious  character  distinguishing  it 
from  all  other  art  of  equal  merit  in  design — it  never  repre- 
sents a  natural  fact.  It  either  forms  its  compositions  out  of 
meaningless  fragments  of  colour  and  flowiugsof  line;  or  iJ 
it  represents  any  living  creature,  it  represents  that  creature 
under  some  distorted  and  monstrous  form.  To  all  the  facta 
and  forms  of  nature  it  wilfully  and  resolutely  opposes 
itself;  it  will  not  draw  a  man,  but  an  eight-armed  mon- 
ster ;  it  will  not  draw  a  flower,  but  only  a  spiral  or  a  zigzag. 

It  thus  indicates  that  the  people  who  practise  it  are  cut 
off  from  all  possible  sources  of  healthy  knowledge  or  na- 
tural delight;  that  they  have  wilfully  sealed  up  and  put 
aside  the  entire  volume  of  the  world,  and  have  got  nothing 
to  read,  nothing  to  dwell  upon,  but  that  imagination  of  the 
thoughts  of  their  hearts,  of  which  we  are  told  that  "  it  is  only 
evil  continually."  Over  the  whole  spectacle  of  creation  they 
have  thrown  a  veil  in  which  there  is  no  rent.  For  them  no 
star  peeps  through  the  blanket  of  the  dark  —  for  them 
neither  their  heaven  shines  nor  their  mountains  rise — for 
them  the  flowers  do  not  blossom — for  them  the  creatures  of 
field  and  forest  do  not  live.  They  lie  bound  in  the  dungeon 
of  their  own  corruption,  encompassed  only  by  doleful  pban 
toms,  or  by  spectral  vacancy. 

Need  I  remind  you  what  an  exact  reverse  of  this  condi 
tion  of  mind,  as  respects  the  observance  of  nature,  is  pre 
Bcnted  by  the  people  whom  we  have  just  been  led  to  con- 
template in  contrast  with  the  Indian  race?     You  will  find 


20  DETERIORATIVE    POWER   OF  [LECT.  I 

upim  reflection,  that  all  the  highest  points  of  the  Scottish 
character  are  connected  with  impressions  derived  straight 
from  the  natural  scenery  of  their  country.  No  nation  has 
ever  before  shown,  in  the  general  tone  of  its  language— in 
ths  general  current  of  its  literature — so  constant  a  habit  of 
hallowing  its  passions  and  confirming  its  principles  by  direct 
association  with  the  charm,  or  power,  of  nature.  The  writ 
mgs  of  Scott  and  Burns — and  yet  more,  of  the  far  greater 
poets  than  Burns  who  gave  Scotland  her  traditional  ballads, 
— furnish  you  in  every  stanza — almost  in  every  line — with 
examples  of  this  association  of  natural  scenery  with  the 
passions  ;*  but  an  instance  of  its  farther  connection  with 
moral  principle  struck  me  forcibly  just  at  the  time,  when  I 
was  most  lamenting  the  absence  of  art  among  the  people.  In 
one  of  the  loneliest  districts  of  Scotland,  where  the  peat  cot- 
tages are  darkest,  just  at  the  western  foot  of  that  great  mass  of 

*  The  great  poets  of  Scotland,  like  the  great  poets  of  all  other  coun- 
tries, never  write  dissolutely,  either  in  matter  or  method ;  but  with 
Btern  and  measured  meaning  in  every  syllable.  Here's  a  bitoffirst-rattf 
work  for  example : 

"  Tweed  said  to  Till, 
*  What  gars  ye  rin  sae  still  ?  * 

Till  said  to  Tweed, 
'  Though  ye  rin  wi'  speed, 

And  I  rin  slaw, 

Whar  ye  droon  ae  man, 

I  droon  twa.'  " 


LECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  21 

the  Grampians  which  encircles  tke  sources  of  the  Spey  and 
the  Dee,  the  main  road  which  traverses  the  chain  winds  round 
the  foot  of  a  broken  rock  called  Crag,  or  Craig  Ellachie. 
There  is  nothing  remarkable  in  either  its  height  or  fcrm; 
it  is  darkened  with  a  few  scattered  pines,  and  touched  along 
its  summit  with  a  flush  of  heather;  but  it  constitutes  a  kind 
of  headland,  or  leading  promontory,  in  the  group  of  hills  to 
which  it  belongs — a  sort  of  initial  letter  of  the  mountains, 
and  thus  stands  in  the  mind  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  dis- 
trict, the  Clan  Grant,  for  a  type  of  their  country,  and  of  the 
influence  of  that  country  upon  themselves.  Their  sense  ol 
this  is  beautifully  indicated  in  the  war-cry  of  the  clan, 
"  Stand  fast,  Craig  Ellachie."  You  may  think  long  over 
those  few  words  without  exhausting  the  deep  wells  of  feel- 
ing and  thought  contained  in  them — the  love  of  the  native 
land,  the  assurance  of  their  faithfulness  to  it;  the  subdued 
and  gentle  assertion  of  indomitable  courage — I  may  need  to 
be  told  to  stand,  but,  if  I  do,  Craig  Ellachie  does.  You  could 
not  but  have  felt,  had  you  passed  beneath  it  at  the  time 
when  so  many  of  England's  dearest  children  were  being 
defended  by  the  strength  of  heart  of  men  born  at  its  foot, 
how  often  among  the  delicate  Indian  palaces,  whose  marble 
was  pallid  with  horror,  and  whose  vermilion  was  darkened 
with  blood,  the  remembrance  of  its  rough  grey  rocks  and 
purple  heaths  must  have  risen  before  tlie  sight  of  the  High- 
land soldier;  how  often  the  hailing  of  the  shot  and  tht 
gbriek  of  battle  would  pass  away  from   his  hearing,   and 


22  DETERIORATIVE   POWER   OF  [LECT.  1 

leave  only  the  whisper  of  the  old  pine  branches — "Stanc 
fast,  Craig  Ellachie  I " 

Yon  have,  ir  these  two  nations,  seen  in  direct  opposition 
the  effects  on  moral  sentiment  of  art  without  nature,  and  of 
nature  without  art.  And  you  see  enough  to  justify  you  in 
ssupecting — while,  if  you  choose  to  investigate  the  subject 
more  deeply  and  with  other  examples,  you  will  find  enough 
to  justify  you  in  concluding — that  art,  followed  as  such, 
and  for  its  own  sake,  irrespective  of  the  interpretation  of 
nature  by  it,  is  destructive  of  whatever  is  best  and  noblest 
in  humanity ;  but  that  nature,  however  simply  observed,  or 
imperfectly  known,  is,  in  the  degree  of  the  affection  felt  for 
it,  protective  and  helpful  to  all  that  is  noblest  in.  humanity. 

You  might  then  conclude  farther,  that  art,  so  far  as  it 
was  devoted  to  the  record  or  the  interpretation  of  nature, 
would  be  helpful  and  ennobling  also. 

And  you  would  conclude  this  with  perfect  truth.  Let 
me  repeat  the  assertion  distinctly  and  solemnly,  as  the  first 
that  I  am  permitted  to  make  in  this  building,  devoted  in  a 
way  so  new  and  so  admirable  to  the  service  of  the  art-stu- 
dents of  England — Wherever  art  is  practised  for  its  own 
sake,  and  the  delight  of  the  workman  is  in  what  he  cbes 
and  produces^  instead  of  what  he  interprets  or  exhibits^ — 
there  art  has  an  influence  of  the  most  fatal  kind  on  brain 
And  heart,  and  it  issues,  if  long  so  pursued,  in  the  destruc' 
iion  both  of  intellectual  power  and  moral  principle ;  whereaa 
Art,  devoted  humbly  and  self-forgetfuUy  to  the  clear  state 


LECT.  1.1  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  23 

meat  and  record  of  the  facts  of  the  universe,  is  always 
lielpful  and  beneficent  to  mankind,  full  of  comfort,  strength. 
and  salvation. 

Nosv,  when  you  were  once  well  assured  of  this,  you 
might  logically  infer  another  thing,  namely,  that  when  Art 
was  occupied  in  the  function  in  which  she  was  serviceable, 
she  would  herself  be  strengthened  by  the  service,  and 
wher.  she  was  doing  what  Providence  without  doubt  in- 
tended her  to  do,  she  would  gain  in  vitality  and  dignity 
jus',  as  she  advanced  in  usefulness.  On  the  other  hand, 
you  might  gather,  that  when  her  agency  was  distorted  to 
the  deception  or  degradation  of  mankind,  she  would  herself 
be  equally  misled  and  degraded — that  she  would  be  checked 
in  advance,  or  precipitated  in  decline. 

And  this  is  the  truth  also;  and  holding  this  clue  you 
will  easily  and  justly  interpret  the  phenomena  of  history. 
So  long  as  Art  is  steady  in  the  contemplation  and  exhibi- 
tion of  natural  facts,  so  long  she  herself  lives  and  grows ; 
and  in  her  own  life  and  growth  partly  implies,  partly 
secures,  that  of  the  nation  in  the  midst  of  which  she  is 
practised.  But  a  time  has  always  hitherto  come,  in  which, 
having  thus  reached  a  singular  perfection,  she  begins  to 
contemplate  that  perfection,  and  to  imitate  it,  and  deduce 
rules  and  forms  from  it ;  and  thus  to  forget  her  duty  and 
ministry  as  the  interpreter  and  discoverer  of  Truth.  And  in 
the  very  instant  whim  this  diversion  of  her  purpose  and 
tbrgetfulness  of  licr  function  take  place — forgetfulness  gene- 


24  DETERIORATIVE    POWER   OF  [LECT.  I 

rally  coincident  with  her  apparent  perfection  —in  that  instant, 
I  say,  begins  her  actual  catastrophe ;  and  by  her  own  faU — 
so  far  as  she  has  influence — she  accelerates  the  ruin  of  the 
nation  by  which  she  is  practised. 

The  study,  however,  of  the  effect  of  art  on  the  mind  of 
nations  is  one  rather  for  the  historian  than  for  us ;  at  all 
events  it  is  one  for  the  discussion  of  which  we  have  no  more 
time  this  evening.  But  I  will  ask  your  patience  with  me 
while  I  try  to  illustrate,  in  some  further  particulars,  the 
dependence  of  the  healthy  state  and  power  of  art  itself 
upon  the  exercise  of  its  appointed  function  in  the  interpre 
tation  of  fact. 

You  observe  that  I  always  say  interpretation,- neyev  iniv 
iaiion.  My  reason  for  so  doing  is,  first,  that  good  art  rarely 
imitates;  it  usually  only  describes  or  explains.  But  my 
second  and  chief  reason  is  that  good  art  always  consists  of 
two  things;  First,  the  observation  of  fact;  secondly,  the 
manifesting  of  human  design  and  authority  in  the  way  that 
fact  is  told.  Great  and  good  art  must  unite  the  two;  it 
cannot  exist  for  a  moment  but  in  their  unity;  it  consists  of 
the  two  as  essentially  as  water  consists  of  oxygen  and 
hydrogen,  or  marble  of  lime  and  carbonic  acid. 

Let  us  inquire  a  little  into  the  nature  of  each  cf  the  ele- 
ments. The  first  element,  we  say,  is  the  love  of  Nature, 
leading  to  the  effort  to  observe  and  report  her  truly.  And 
this  is  the  first  and  leading  element.  Review  for  yourselvea 
Ihe  history  of  art,  and  you  will  find  this  to  be  a  manifc^sl 


LECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  25 

certainty,  that  no  great  school  ever  yet  existed  which  had  not 
for  prirrMl  aim  the  representation  of  some  natural  fact  as  truly 
as  possible.  There  have  only  yet  appeared  in  the  world 
thi'ce  schools  of  perfect  art — schools,  that  is  to  say,  that  did 
their  work  as  well  as  it  seems  possible  to  do  it.  These  are 
the  Athenian,*  Florentine,  and  Venetian.  The  Athenian 
proposed  to  itself  the  perfect  representation  of  the  form  of 
the  human  body.  It  strove  to  do  that  as  well  as  it  could; 
it  did  that  as  well  as  it  can  be  done ;  and  all  its  greatness 
was  founded  upon  and  involved  in  that  single  and  honest 
effort.  The  Florentine  school  proposed  to  itself  the  perfect 
expression  of  human  emotion— the  showing  of  the  effects  of 
passion  in  the  human  face  and  gesture.  I  call  this  the  Flo 
rentine  school,  because,  whether  you  take  Raphael  for  tht^ 
culminating  master  of  exprcssional  art  in  Italy,  or  Leonardo, 
or  Michael  Angelo,  you  will  find  that  the  whole  ^lergy  of 
the  national  effort  which  produced  those  masters  had  its  rout 
in  Florence;  not  at  Urbino  or  Milan.  I  say,  then,  this 
Florentine  or  loading  Italian  school  proposed  to  itself  hu- 
man expression  for  its  aim  in  natural  truth;  it  strove  to  do 
that  as  well  as  it  could — did  it  as  well  as  it  can  be  done — 
and  all  its  gn.'atness  is  rooted  in  that  single  and  honest 
effort,  ^riiinlly,  the  Venetian  school  proposed  the  represen- 
tation of  the  effect  of  colour  and  shade  on  all  things ;  chiefly 
on  the  human  form.     It  tried  to  do  that  as  well  as  it  could 

*  Sou  bcluw,  llii'  Cartlicr  notice  of  the  real  spirit  of  Greek  work,  in  the 
address  at  Bradfoi  il. 

2 


26  DETERIOKAnVE    POWER    OF  [LECT.  1 

— did  It  as  well  as  it  can  be  done — and  all  its  greatness  is 
founded  ou  that  single  and  honest  effort. 

Pray,  do  not  leave  this  room  without  a  perfectly  oleai 
liolding  of  these  three  ideas.  You  may  try  them,  and  tosa 
them  about  afterwards,  as  much  as  you  like,  to  see  if  they'll 
bear  shaking ;  but  do  let  me  put  them  well  and  plainly  into 
your  possession.  Attach  them  to  three  works  of  art  which 
you  all  have  either  seen  or  continually  heard  of.  There's 
the  (so-called)  "  Theseus"  of  the  Elgin  marbles.  That  repre- 
sents the  whole  end  and  aim  of  the  Athenian  school — the 
natural  form  of  the  human  body.  All  their  conventional 
architecture — their  graceful  shaping  and  painting  of  pottery 
— whatsoever  other  art  they  practised — was  dependent  for 
its  greatness  on  this  sheet-anchor  of  central  aim :  true  shape 
of  living  man.  Then  take,  for  your  type  of  the  Italian 
school,  Raphael's  "Disputa  del  Sacramento;"  that  will  be 
an  accepted  type  by  everybody,  and  will  involve  no  possibly 
questionable  points :  the  Germans  will  admit  it ;  the  English 
academicians  will  admit  it;  and  the  English  purists  and 
pre-Raphaelites  will  admit  it.  Well,  there  you  have  the 
truth  of  human  expression  proposed  as  an  aijn.  That  is 
the  way  people  look  when  they  feel  this  or  that — when  they 
.nave  this  or  that  other  mental  character :  are  they  devo 
tional,  thoughtful,  affectionate,  indignant,  or  inspired?  are 
they  prophets,  saints,  priests,  or  kings?  then — whatsoever 
is  truly  thoughtful,  affectionate,  prophetic,  priestly,  kingly 
— thai  the  Florentine  school  tried  to  discern,  and  show ;  thcu 


LECT.  I.J  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  27 

tliey  have  discerned  and  shown ;  and  all  their  gieatneis  is 
first  fastened  in  their  aim  at  this  central  truth — the  open  ex- 
pression of  the  living  human  soul. 

Lastly,  take  Veronese's  "  Marriage  in  Cana"  in  the 
Louvre.  There  you  have  the  most  perfect  representation 
possible  of  colour,  and  light,  and  shade,  as  they  affect  the 
external  aspect  of  the  human  form,  and  its  immediate  acces- 
sories, architecture,  furniture,  and  dress.  This  external 
aspect  of  noblest  nature  was  the  first  aim  of  the  Venetians, 
and  all  their  greatness  depended  on  their  resolution  to 
achieve,  and  their  patience  in  achieving  it. 

Here,  then,  are  the  three  greatest  schools  of  the  former 
world  exemplified  for  you  in  three  well-known  works.  The 
Phidian  "  Theseus"  represents  the  Greek  school  pursuing 
truth  of  form ;  the  "  Disputa"  of  Raphael,  the  Florentine 
school  pursuing  truth  of  mental  expression ;  the  "  Marriage 
in  Cana,"  the  Venetian  school  pursuing  truth  of  colour  and 
light.  But  do  not  suppose  that  the  law  which  I  am  stating 
to  you — the  great  law  of  art-life — can  only  be  seen  in  these, 
the  most  powerful  of  all  art  schools.  It  is  just  as  manifest 
in  each  and  every  school  that  ever  has  had  life  in  it  at  all. 
Wheresoever  the  search  after  truth  begins,  there  life  begins, 
wheresoever  that  search  ceases,  there  life  ceases.  As  long 
as  a  school  of  art  holds  any  chain  of  natural  facts,  trying  to 
discover  more  of  thcin  and  express  them  better  daily,  it  may 
play  hither  and  thither  as  it  likes  on  this  side  of  the  chain 
"^r  that;  it  may  design  grotesques  and  conventionalisms 


28  DETERIOKATIVE    POWER   OF  fLECT.  1 

build  the  simplest  buildings,  serve  the  mosi  practical  utili- 
ties, yet  all  it  does  will  be  gloriously  designed  and  gloriously 
done;  but  let  it  once  quit  hold  of  the  chain  of  natural  fact, 
cease  to  pursue  that  as  the  clue  to  its  work ;  let  it  propose 
to  itself  any  other  end  than  preaching  this  living  word,  and 
think  first  of  showing  its  own  skill  or  its  own  fancy,  and 
from  that  hour  its  fall  is  precipitate — its  destruction  sure  ; 
nothing  that  it  does  or  designs  will  ever  have  life  or  loveli- 
ness in  it  more ;  its  hour  has  come,  and  there  is  no  work, 
nor  device,  nor  knowledge,  no^  wisdom  in  the  grave  whither 
it  goeth. 

Let  us  take  for  example  that  school  of  art  over  which 
many  of  you  would  perhaps  think  this  law  had  but  little 
power — the  school  of  Gothic  architecture.  Many  of  us 
may  have  been  in  the  habit  of  thinking  of  that  school 
rather  as  of  one  of  forms  than  of  facts — a  school  of  pin- 
nacles, and  buttresses,  and  conventional  mouldings,  and 
disguise  of  nature  by  monstrous  imaginings — not  a  school 
of  truth  at  all.  I  think  I  shall  be  able,  even  in  the  little 
time  we  have  to-night,  to  show  that  this  is  not  so;  and  that 
our  great  law  holds  just  as  good  at  Amiens  and  Salisbury 
as  it  docs  at  Athens  and  Florence. 

T  will  go  back  then  first  to  the  very  beginnings  of  Q-othic 
art,  and  before  you,  the  students  of  Kensington,  as  an  im* 
pannelled  jury,  I  will  bring  two  examples  of  the  barbarism 
out  of  which  Gothic  art  emerges,  approximately  contem 
porary  in  date  and  parallel  in  executive  skill;  but,  the  one, 


I<ECT.   I.]  CONVENTIONAL    AKT,  29 

a  barbarism  tliat  did  not  get  on,  and  could  not  get  on ;  the 
other,  a  barbarism  that  could  get  on,  and  did  get  on  ;  and 
you,  the  impannelled  jurj'',  shall  judge  what  is  the  essentia/ 
difference  between  the  two  barbarisms,  and  decide  for  your 
selves  what  is  the  seed  of  life  in  the  one,  and  the  sign  o 
death  in  tlie  other. 

The  iirst, — that  which  has  in  it  the  sign  of  death, — fur 
nishcs  us  at  the  same  time  with  an  illustration  far  too  inter- 
esting to  be  passed  by,  of  certain  principles  much  depended 
on  by  our  common  modern  designers.  Taking  up  one  of 
our  architectural  publications  the  other  day,  and  opening 
it  at  random,  I  cliauced  u])(m  this  piece  of  information,  put 
in  rather  curious  English ;  but  you  shall  have  it  as  it  stands — 

"  Aristotle  asserts,  that  the  greatest  species  of  the  beauti 
ful  arc  Order,  Symmetry,  and  the  Definite." 

I  should  tell  you,  however,  that  this  statement  is  not  given 
as  authoritative;  it  is  one  exam})le  of  various  Architectural 
teachings,  given  in  a  report  in  the  Building  Chronicle  for 
May,  1857,  of  a  lecture  on  Proportion ;  in  which  the  only 
thing  the  lecturer  appears  to  have  proved  was  that, — 

"The  system  of  dividing  the  diameter  of  the  shaft  of  a  column  into 
parts  for  copying  tlie  ancient  architectural  remains  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
adopted  by  architects  from  Vitruvius  (circa  b.c.  25)  to  the  present 
period,  as  a  method  for  producing  ancient  architecture,  is  entirely  use- 
less, for  the  sevo"al  parts  of  Grecian  architecture  cannot  be  reduced  or 
subdivided  by  this  system  ;  neither  does  it  apply  to  the  architecture  ol 
Eiome 


30 


DETERIORATIVE    PUWER   OF 


[LECT.  1 


Still,  as  far  as  1  can  make  it  out,  the  lecture  appears  to 
have  been  just  one  of  those  of  which  you  will  at  present 
hear  so  many,  the  protests  of  architects  who  have  no  know* 
ledge  of  sculpture — or  of  any  other  mode  of  expressing 
natural  beauty — against  natural  beauty ;  and  their  endea- 
vour to  substitute  mathematical  proportions  for  the  know- 
ledge of  life  they  do  not  possess,  and  the  representation  of 
life  of  which  they  are  incapable.  Now,  this  substitution 
of  obedience  to  mathematical  law  for  sympathy  with 
observed  life,  is  the  first  characteristic  of  the  hopeless  work 
of  all  ages ;  as  such,  you  will  find  it  eminently  manifested 
in  the  specimen  I  have  to  give  you  of  the  hopeless  Gothic 
barbarism;    the    barbarism    from   which    nothing    could 

emerge — for  which  no  future  was 
possible  but  extinction.  The 
Aristotelian  principles  of  the 
Beautiful  are,  you  remember, 
Order,  Symmetry,  and  the  Defi- 
nite. Here  you  have  the  three, 
in  perfection,  applied  to  the 
ideal  of  an  angel,  in  a  psalter 
of  the  eighth  century,  existing 
in  the  library  of  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Cambridge.* 
Now,  you  see  the  characteristics  of  this  utterly  dead  school 


*  I  copy  this  woodcut  from  Westwood's  "  Palseographia  Sacm.* 


(iECT.  l.J  CONVENTION  A.L   ART  31 

are,  first  the  wilful  closing  of  its  eyes  to  natural  facts ;—  -for_ 
however  ignorant  a  person  may  be,  he  need  only  look  at  a 
human  being  to  see  that  it  has  a  mouth  as  well  as  eyes ; 
and  secondJy,  the  endeavour  to  adorn  or  idealize  natural 
fact  according  to  its  own  notions:  it  puts  red  spots  in  the 
middle  of  the  hands,  and  sharpens  the  thumbs,  thinking  to 
improve  them.  Here  you  have  the  most  pure  type  possi- 
ble of  the  principles  of  idealism  in  all  ages :  whenever  peo 
pie  don't  look  at  Nature,  they  always  think  they  can 
improve  her.  You  will  also  admire,  doubtless,  the  exquisite 
result  of  the  application  of  our  great  modern  architectural 
principle  of  beauty — symmetry,  or  equal  balance  of  part 
by  part ;  you  see  even  the  eyes  are  made  symmetrical — 
entirely  round,  instead  of  irregular,  oval ;  and  the  iris  is  set 
[jroperly  in  the  middle,  instead  of— as  nature  has  absurdly 
[)ut  it — rather  under  the  upper  lid.  You  will  also  observe 
the  "  principle  of  the  pyramid"  in  the  general  arrangement 
of  the  figure,  and  the  value  of  "  series"  in  the  placing  of 
dots. 

From  this  dead  barbarism  we  pass  to  living  Darl)arism— 
to  work  done  by  hands  quite  as  rude,  if  not  ruder,  and  b^ 
minds  as  uninformed;  and  yet  work  which  in  every  line 
of  it  is  prophetic  of  power,  and  has  in  it  the  sure  dawn  of 
day."  You  have  often  heard  it  said  that  Giotto  was  the 
founder  of  art  in  Italy,  He  was  not:  neither  he,  nor 
Giunta  Pisano,  nor  Niccolo  Pisano.  They  all  laid  strong 
hands  to  the  work,  and  brought  it  first  into  aspect  above 


32  DK'l'EKloUATIVE    TOWER    OF  [LECT.  1 

ground;  but  tlic  fouudution  hud  been  laid  for  them  hy 
the  builders  of  the  Lombardic  ehurches  in  the  valleys  of 
the  Adda  and  the  Arno.  It  is  in  the  sculpture  of  the 
round  arched  churches  of  North  Italy,  bearing  disputable 
dates,  ranging  from  the  eighth  to  the  twelfth  century, 
that  you  will  find  the  lowest  struck  roots  of  the  art  of 
Titian  and  Raphael.*  I  go,  therefore,  to  the  church 
which  is  certainly  the  earliest  of  these,  St,  Ambrogio,  of 
Milan,  said  still  to  retain  some  portions  of  the  actual 
structure  from  which  St.  Ambrose  excluded  Theodosius, 
and  at  all  events  furnishing  the  most  archaic  examples  of 
Lombardic  sculpture  in  North  Italy.  I  do  not  venture  to 
guess  their  date ;  they  are  barbarous  enough  for  any 
date. 

We  find  the  pulpit  of  this  church  covered  with  in- 
terlacing patterns,  closely  resembling  those  of  the  manu- 
script at  Cambridge,  but  among  them  is  figure  sculpture  of 
a  very  different  kind.  It  is  wrought  with  mere  incisions  in 
the  stone,  of  which  the  effect  may  be  tolerably  given  by 
single  lines  in  a  drawing.  Remember,  therefore,  for  a 
moment — as  characteristic  of  culminating  Italian  art- 
Michael  Angelo's  fresco  of  the  "  Temptation  of  Eve,"  in 
the  Sistine  chapel,  and  you  will  be  more  interested  in  seeing 
the  birth  of  Italian  art,   illustrated  by  the  same  subject, 

*  T  have  said  elsewhere,  "  the  root  of  all  art  is  struck  in  the  thirteenth 
century."  This  is  quite  true:  but  of  course  some  of  the  smallest  fibrsi 
rup  lower,  as  in  tliis  instance 


LECT.  I.] 


CONVENTIONAL    ART. 


B'd 


from   St.  Ambrogio,    of   Milan,    the    '  Serpent  beguiling 
Eve."* 

Yet,  in  that  sketch,  rude  and  ludicrous  as  it  is,  you  havfl 


tlic  elements  of  life  in  their  first  form.  The  people  who 
could  do  that  were  sure  to  get  on.  For,  observe,  the  work- 
man's whole  aim  is  straight  at  the  facts,  as  well  as  he  can 
get  them  ;  and  not  merely  at  the  facts,  bat  at  the  very  heart 
i)f  the  facts.  A  common  workman  might  have  looked  at 
nature  for  his  serpent,  but  he  would  have  thought  only  of 
ts  scales.  But  this  fellow  does  not  want  scales,  nor  coils 
he  can  do  without  them ;  he  wants  the  serpent's  heart — 


♦  Thi'?  out  is  ruder  than  it  sliould  be:  the  incisions  in  J.he  marble 
have  a  lighter  elTcct  than  thcst;  roiii,di  bhiek  lines;  but  it  is  not  worti 
while  to  do  it  better. 

2* 


84  DETERIORAT[VE    POWER   OF  [LECT.  1 

malice  and  insin nation  ; — and  lie  has  actually  got  them  to 
some  extent.  So  also  a  common  workman,  even  in  thie 
barbarous  stage  of  art,  might  have  carved  Eve's  arms  and 
body  a  good  deal  better ;  but  this  man  does  not  care  about 
arms  and  body,  if  he  can  only  get  at  Eve's  mind — show 
that  she  is  pleased  at  being  flattered,  and  yet  in  a  state  of 
uncomfortable  hesitation.  And  some  look  of  listening,  of 
complacency,  and  of  embarrassment  he  has  verily  got: — 
note  the  eyes  slightly  askance,  the  lips  compi-essed,  and  the 
right  hand  nervously  grasping  the  left  arm:  nothing  can 
be  declared  impossible  to  the  people  who  could  begin  thus 
■ — the  world  is  open  to  them,  and  all  that  is  in  it;  while, 
on  the  contrary,  nothing  is  possible  to  the  man-  who  did 
the  sj^mmetrical  angel — the  world  is  keyless  to  him;  he  has 
built  a  cell  for  himself  in  which  he  must  abide,  barred  up 
for  ever — there  is  no  more  hope  for  him  than  for  a  sponge 
or  a  madrepore. 

I  shall  not  trace  from  this  embryo  the  progress  of  Gothic 
art  in  Italy,  because  it  is  much  complicated  and  involved 
with  traditions  of  other  schools,  and  because  most  of  the 
Btudents  will  be  less  familiar  with  its  results  than  with  their' 
own  northern  buildings.  So,  these  two  designs  indicating 
Death  and  Life  in  the  beginnings  of  mediseval  art,  we  will 
take  an  example  of  the  2^f'og7'ess  of  that  art  from  our  north- 
ern work.  Now,  many  of  you,  doubtless,  have  been  in- 
terested by  tlie  mass,  grandeur,  and  gloom  of  Norman 
architecture,  as  much  as  by  Gothic  traceries ;  and  wlien  you 


LECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL    ART.  85 

hear  me  say  that  the  root  of  all  good  work  lies  in  natural 
facts,  you  doubtless  think  instantly  of  your  round  arches, 
with  their  rude  cushion  capitals,  and  of  the  billet  or  zigzag 
work  by  which  they  are  surrounded,  and  you  cannot  see 
what  the  knowledge  of  nature  has  to  do  with  either  the 
simple  plan  or  the  rude  mouldings.  But  all  those  simple 
conditions  of  Norman  art  are  merely  the  expiring  of  it  to- 
wards the  extreme  north.  Do  not  study  Norman  archi- 
tecture in  Northumberland,  but  in  Normandy,  and  then  you 
will  find  that  it  is  just  a  peculiarly  manly,  and  practically 
useful,  form  of  the  whole  great  French  school  of  rounded 
architecture.  And  where  has  that  French  school  its  origin  ? 
Wholly  in  the  rich  conditions  of  sculpture,  which,  rising 
first  out  of  imitations  of  the  Roman  bas-rehefs,  covered 
all  the  fa9ades  of  the  French  early  churches  with  one  con- 
tinuous arabesque  of  floral  or  animal  life.  If  you  want  to 
study  round-arched  buildings,  do  not  go  to  Durham,  but 
go  to  Poictiers,  and  there  you  will  see  how  all  the  simple 
decorations  which  give  you  so  much  pleasure  even  in  their 
isolated  application  were  invented  by  persons  practised  in 
carving  men,  monsters,  wild  animals,  birds,  and  flowers,  in 
overwhelming  redundance ;  and  then  trace  this  architecture 
forward  in  central  France,  and  you  will  find  it  loses 
nothing  of  its  richness — it  only  gains  in  truth,  and  there- 
fore in  grace,  until  just  at  the  moment  of  transition  into  the 
I  ointed  style,  yon  have  the  consummate  type  of  the  sculp- 
ture of  the  school  given  you  in  the  west  front  of  the  Cu- 


36  DErERIOKATlVE   POWER   OF  [LECT.   I 

Lhedral  of  Chartrcs.     From  that  front  I  have  chosen  twc 
fragments  to  illustrate  it.* 

These  statues  have  been  long,  and  justly,  considered  as 
epresentative  of  the  highest  skill  of  the  twelfth  or  earliest 
part  of  the  thirteenth  century  in  France  ;  and  they  indeed 
possess  a  dignity  and  delicate  charm,  which  are  for  the  most 
part  wanting  in  later  works.  It  is  owing  partly  to  real 
nobleness  of  feature,  but  chiefly  to  the  grace,  mingled  witli 
severity,  of  the  falling  lines  of  excessively  thin  drapery  ;  as 
well  as  to  a  most  studied  finish  in  composition,  every  part 
of  the  ornamentation  tenderly  harmonizing  with  the  rest. 
So  far  as  their  power  over  certain  tones  of  religious  mind 
is  owmg  to  a  palpable  degree  of  non-naturalism  in  them,  I 
do  not  praise  it — the  exaggerated  thinness  of  body  and  stiff- 
ness of  attitude  are  faults ;  but  they  are  noble  faults,  and 
give  the  statues  a  strange  look  of  forming  part  of  the  very 
building  itself,  and  sustaining  it — not  like  the  Greek  cary- 
atid, without  effort — nor  like  the  Kenaissance  caryatid,  by 
painful  or  impossible  effort — but  as  if  all  that  was  silent 
and  stern,  and  withdrawn  apart,  and  stiffened  in  chill  oi 
heart  against  the  terror  of  earth,  had  passed  into  a  shape  of 

*  This  part  of  the  lecture  was  illustrated  by  two  drawings,  made 
admirably  by  Mr.  J.  T.  Laing,  with  the  help  of  photographs  from  statues 
at  Chartres.  Tlie  drawings  rnay  be  seen  at  present  at  the  Kensington 
Museum  ;  but  any  large  photograph  of  the  west  front  of  Chartres  will 
'inablo  the  reader  to  follow  what  is  stated  in  the  lecture,  as  far  aa  i« 
aeedful. 


LECT.  I.J  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  iJV 

eternal  marble ;  and  thus  the  Ghost  had  given,  to  bear  up 
the  pillars  of  the  church  on  earth,  all  the  patient  and  ex 
pectant  nature  that  it  needed  no  more  in  heaven.  This  is 
the  transcendental  view  of  the  meaning  of  those  sculptures, 
[  do  not  dwel:  upon  it.  What  I  do  lean  upon  is  thei? 
purely  naturalistic  and  vital  power.  They  are  all  })orti-aits 
— unknown,  most  of  them,  I  believe, — but  palpably  and 
unmistakcably  portraits,  if  not  taken  from  the  actual  per 
son  for  whom  the  statue  stands,  at  all  events  studied  from 
some  living  person  whose  features  might  fairly  represent 
those  of  the  king  or  saint  intended.  Several  of  them  I 
suppose  to  be  authentic :  there  is  one  of  a  queen,  who  has 
evidently,  while  she  lived,  been  notable  for  her  bright  black 
eyes.  The  sculptor  has  cut  the  iris  deep  into  the  stone,  and 
her  dark  eyes  are  still  suggested  with  her  smile. 

There  is  anc^ther  tiling  I  wish  you  to  notice  specially  in 
these  statues — the  way  in  which  the  floral  moulding  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  vertical  lines  of  the  figure.  You  have  thus 
the  utmost  complexity  and  richness  of  curvature  set  side  by 
side  with  the  pure  and  delicate  parahel  lines,  and  both  the 
characters  gain  in  interest  and  beauty  ;  but  there  is  deeper 
significance  in  the  thing  than  that  of  mere  eflect  in  compo- 
sition;— significance  not  intended  on  i\w,  part  of  the  sculp- 
tor, but  all  the  more  valuable  because  unintentional.  I 
mean  the  close  association  of  the  beauty  of  lower  nature  in 
animal-!  and  flowers,  with  the  beauty  of  higher  nature  in 
hiitnaii  ronii.       You  never  irct  this  in  rm-ck  work.     Greek 


38  DETERIORATIVE    POWER   OF  [LECT.  I 

statues  arc  always  isolated  ;  blank  fields  of  stone,  or  depths 
of  shadow,  relieving  the  form  of  the  statue,  as  the  world  of 
lower  nature  which  they  despised  retired  in  darkness  from 
their  hearts.  Here,  the  clothed  figure  seems  the  type  of 
the  Christian  spirit — in  many  respects  feebler  and  more 
contracted — but  purer  ;  clothed  in  its  white  robes  and 
crown,  and  with  the  riches  of  all  creation  at  its  side. 

The  next  step  in  the  change  will  be  set  before  you  in  a 
moment,  merely  by  comparing  this  statue  from  the  west 
front  of  Chartres  with  that  of  the  Madonna,  from  the  south 
transept  door  of  Amiens.* 

This  Madonna,  with  the  sculpture  round  her,  represents 
the  culminating  power  of  Gothic  art  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury. Sculpture  has  been  gaining  continually  in  the  inter- 
val ;  gaining,  simply  because  becoming  every  day  more 
truthful,  more  tender,  and  more  suggestive.  By  the  way, 
the  old  Douglas  motto,  "  Tender  and  true,"  may  wisely  be 
taken  up  again  by  all  of  us,  for  our  own,  in  art  no  less  than 
in  other  things.  Depend  upon  it,  the  first  universal  chii 
racteristic  of  all  great  art  is  Tenderness,  as  the  second  is 
Truth.  I  find  this  more  and  more  every  day  :  an  infinitude 
of  tenderness  is  the  chief  gift  and  inheritance  of  all  the 
truly  great  men.  It  is  sure  to  involve  a  relative  intensity 
o"  disdain  towards  base  things,  and  an  appearance  of  stern- 

*  There  are  many  pliotograplis  of  this  door  and  of  its  central  statue 
[ts  3Culptiiro  in  the  tympanum  is  farther  described  in  the  Fourth  Leo 
ure. 


fiECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  39 

aess  and  arrogance  in  the  eyes  of  all  hard,  stupid,  and  vul- 
gar  people — quite  terrific  to  such,  if  they  are  2apable  of 
terror,  and  hateful  to  them,  if  they  are  capable  of  nothing 
higher  than  hatred.  Dante's  is  the  great  type  of  this  class 
of  mind.  I  say  the  first  inheritance  is  Tenderness — the 
second  Truth,  because  the  Tenderness  is  in  the  make  of  the 
creature,  the  Truth  in  his  acquired  habits  and  knowledge ; 
besides,  the  love  comes  first  in  dignity  as  well  as  in  time, 
and  that  is  always  pure  and  complete  :  the  truth,  at  best, 
imperfect. 

To  come  back  to  our  statue.  You  will  observe  that  the 
arrangement  of  this  sculpture  is  exactly  tlie  same  as  at 
Chartres — severe  falling  drapery,  set  off  by  rich  floral 
ornament  at  the  side ;  but  the  statue  is  now  completely 
animated :  it  is  no  longer  fixed  as  an  upright  pillar,  but 
bends  aside  out  of  its  niche,  and  the  floral  ornament,  in- 
stead of  being  a  conventional  wreath,  is  of  exquisitely 
arranged  hawthorn.  The  work,  however,  as  a  whole, 
though  perfectly  characteristic  of  the  advance  of  the  age  in 
style  and  purpose,  is  in  some  subtler  qualities  inferior  to 
that  of  Chartres.  The  individual  sculptor,  though  trained 
m  a  more  advanced  school,  has  been  himself  a  man  of  infe- 
rior order  of  mind  compared  to  the  one  who  worked  at 
Chartres.  But  I  have  not  time  to  point  out  to  you  the 
Bubthii-  characters  by  which  I  know  this. 

This  statue,  then,  marks  the  culminating  |)oint  of  Gothif 
art,  becanst',  iij>  to  this  time,  the  eyes  of   its  designers  haO 


40  DETERIORATIVE   POWER   OF  [LEOT.  i 

been  steadily  fixed  on  natural  truth — tliey  had  been  ad 
vancing  from  flower  to  flower,  from  form  to  form,  from  facti 
to  face, — gaining  perpetually  in  knowledge  and  veracity— 
therefore,  perpetually  in  power  and  in  grace.  But  at  this 
[loint  a  fatal  change  came  over  their  aim.  From  the  statue 
they  now  began  to  turn  the  attention  cliiefly  to  the  niche 
of  the  statue,  and  from  the  floral  ornament*  to  the  mould- 
ings that  enclosed  the  floral  ornament.  The  first  result 
of  this  was,  however,  though  not  the  grandest,  yet  the  most 
finished  of  northern  genius.  You  have,  in  the  earlier 
Grothic,  less  wonderful  construction,  less  careful  masonry, 
far  less  expression  -of  harmony  of  parts  in  the  balance  of 
the  building.  Earlier  work  alwaj^s  has  more  or  jess  of  the 
character  of  a  good  solid  wall  with  irregular  holes  in  it, 
well  carved  wherever  there  is  room.  But  the  last  phase  of 
good  Gothic  has  no  room  to  spare;  it  rises  as  high  as  it 
can  on  narrowest  foundation,  stands  in  perfect  strength 
with  the  least  possible  substance  in  its  bars ;  connects  niche 
with  niche,  and  line  with  line,  in  an  exquisite  harmony 
from  which  no  stone  can  be  removed,  and  to  which  you  can 
add  not  a  pinnacle  ;  and  yet  introduces  in  rich,  though  now 
more  calcuhited  profusion,  the  living  clement  of  its  sculp- 
ture :  sculpture  in  the  quatrefoils — sculpture  in  the  brack- 
!its — sculpture  in  the  gargoyles — sculpture  in  the  niches — 
sculpture  in  th(^  ridges  and  hollows  of  its  mouldings, — not  a 
shadow  without   meaning,  and   not  a  light  without  life.* 

♦  Tilt!  Iwo  Iran  HP}  lis  o{'  Rouen  Cathedral  illustrate  this  style.     There 


LECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL    ART.  4i 

But  with  this  very  perfection  of  his  work  came  the  un- 
happy pride  of  the  builder  in  wLiat  he  had  done.  As  long 
as  he  had  been  merely  raising  clumsy  walls  and  carving 
tliem  like  a  child,  in  waywardness  of  fancy,  his  delight 
was  in  the  things  he  thought  of  as  he  carved  ;  but  when 
he  had  once  reached  this  pitch  of  constructive  science,  he 
began  to  think  only  how  cleverly  he  could  put  the  stones 
together.  .  The  question  was  not  now  with  him.  What  can 
I  represent?  but.  How  high  can  I  build — ^how  wonderfully 
can  I  hang  this  arch  in  air,  or  weave  this  tracery  across  the 
clouds?  x\nd  the  catastrophe  was  instant  and  irrevocable. 
Architecture  became  in  France  a  mere  web  of  waving  lines, 
— in  England  a  mere  grating  of  perpendicular  ones.  Re- 
dundance was  substituted  for  invention,  and  geometry  for 
passion ;  the  Gc^thic  art  became  a  mere  expression  of  wan- 
ton expenditure,  and  vulgar  mathematics ;  and  was  swe])t 
away,  as  it  then  deserved  to  be  swept  away,  by  the  severer 
pride,  and  purer  learning,  of  the  schools  founded  on  classi 
cal  traditions. 

You  cannot  now  fail  to  see  how,  tnroughout  the  history 
of  this  wonderful  art — from  its  earliest  dawn  in  Lombardy 
to  its  last  catastrophe  in  France  and  England — sculpture, 
founded  on  love  of  nature,  was  the  talisman  of  its  exist 

are  plenty  of  photographs  of  them.  I  take  this  opportunity  c£  re- 
peating what  I  have  several  times  before  stated,  for  the  sake  of  travel- 
ers, that  St.  Ouen,  impressive  as  it  is,  is  entirely  inferior  to  the  tran 
BeDts  of  Rouen  CathedraL 


42  DETERlOltATlVK    TOWER    OF  [LECT.  I 

eiice ;  wherever  sculpture  was  practised,  arcliitecture  arose 
—wherever  that  was  neglected,  architecture  expired  ;  and, 
believe  me,  all  you  students  who  love  this  mediseval  art, 
there  is  no  hope  of  your  ever  doing  any  good  with  it,  but 
on  this  everlasting  principle.  Your  patriotic  associations 
with  it  are  of  no  use ;  your  romantic  associations  with  it — 
either  of  chivalry  or  religion — arc  of  no  use;  they  are 
worse  than  useless,  they  are  false.  Gothic  is  not  an  art  foi 
knights  and  nobles ;  it  is  an  art  for  the  people  :  it  is  not  an 
art  for  churches  or  sanctuaries  ;  it  is  an  art  for  houses  and 
homes  :  it  is  not  an  art  for  England  only,  but  an  art  for 
the  world :  above  all,  it  is  not  an  art  of  form  or  tradition 
only,  but  an  art  of  vital  practice  and  perpetual  renewal. 
And  whosoever  pleads  for  it  as  an  ancient  or  a  formal 
thing,  and  tries  to  teach  it  you  as  an  ecclesiastical  tradition 
or  a  geometrical  science,  knows  nothing  of  its  essence,  less 
than  nothing  of  its  power. 

Leave,  therefore,  boldly,  though  not  irreverently,  mysti 
cism  and  symbolism  on  the  one  side ;  cast  away  with  utter 
scorn  geometry  and  legalism  on  the  other ;  seize  hold  of 
God's  hand  and  look  full  in  the  fece  of  His  creation,  and 
there  is  nothing  lie  will  not  enable  you  to  achieve. 

Thus,  then,  you  will  find — and  the  more  profound  and 
accurate  your  knowledge  of  the  history  of  art  the  more 
assuredly  you  will  find — that  the  living  power  in  all  the 
real  schools,  be  they  great  or  small,  is  love  of  nature.  But 
do  not  mistake  me  by  supposing  that  I  mean  this  law  to  be 


fiECT.  1.]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  48 

all  that  is  necessary  to  form  a  school.  There  needs  to  be 
much  superadded  to  it,  though  there  never  must  be  any- 
thing superseding  it.  The  main  thing  which  needs  to  be 
superadded  is  the  gift  of  design. 

It  is  always  dangerous;  and  liable  to  diminish  the  clear 
ness  of  impression,  to  go  over  much  ground  in  the  course 
of  one  lecture.  But  I  dare  not  present  you  with  a  maimed 
view  of  this  important  subject:  I  dare  not  put  off  to 
anothiT  time,  when  the  same  persons  would  not  be  again 
assembled,  the  statement  of  the  great  collateral  necessity 
which,  as  well  as  the  necessity  of  truth,  governs  all  noble 
art. 

That  collateral  necessity  is  the  visible  operation  of  hnrnan 
intellect  in  the  presentation  of  truth,  the  evidence  of  what  ia 
properly  called  design  or  plan  in  the  work,  no  less  than  of 
veracity.  A  looking-glass  does  not  design — it  receives  and 
communicates  indiscriminately  all  that  passes  before  it ;  a 
painter  designs  when  he  chooses  some  things,  refuses  others, 
and  arranges  all. 

This  selection  and  arrangement  must  have  influence  over 
everything  that  the  art  is  concerned  with,  great  or  small — 
over  lines,  over  colours,  and  over  ideas.  Given  a  certain 
group  of  colours,  by  adding  another  colour  at  the  side  of 
them,  you  will  either  improve  the  group  and  render  it 
more  delightful,  or  injure  it,  and  render  it  discordant  and 
unintelligible.  "Design"  is  the  choosing  and  placing  the 
colour  so  as  to  help  and  enhance  all  the  other  colours  it  is  set 


14  DETERIOEATIVE    POWER    OF  [LECT.  I 

beside.  So  of  thoughts:  in  ;i  good  composition,  every  idea 
is  presented  in  just  that  order,  and  with  just  that  force, 
which  will  perfectly  connect  it  with  all  the  other  thoughts 
in  the  work,  and  will  illustrate  the  others  as  well  as  receive 
illustration  from  them  ;  so  that  the  entire  chain  of  thoughts 
OiYered  to  the  beholder's  mind  shall  be  received  by  him 
with  as  much  delight  and  with  as  little  eJBfort  as  is  possible. 
And  thus  you  see  design,  properly  so  called,  is  human  in- 
vention, consulting  human  capacity.  Out  of  the  infinite  heap 
of  things  around  us  in  the  world,  it  chooses  a  certain 
number  which  it  can  tlioroughly  grasp,  and  presents  this 
group  to  the  spectator  in  the  form  best  calculated  to  enable 
him  to  grasp  it  also,  and  to  grasp  it  with  delight. 

And  accordingly,  the  capacities  of  both  gatherer  and 
receiver  being  limited,  the  object  is  to  make  everything  that 
you  offer  helpful  and  precious.  If  you  give  one  grain  of 
weight  too  much,  so  as  to  increase  fatigue  without  profit,  or 
bulk  without  value — that  added  grain  is  hurtful;  if  you 
put  one  spot  or  one  syllable  out  of  its  proper  place,  that 
spot  or  syllable  will  be  destructive — how  far  destructive  it 
is  almost  impossible  to  tell :  a  misplaced  touch  may  some- 
times annihilate  the  labour  of  hours.  Nor  are  any  of  us 
prepared  to  understand  the  work  of  any  gi-eat  master,  til] 
w^e  feel  this,  and  feel  it  as  distinctly  as  we  do  the  value  of 
arrangement  in  the  notes  of  music.  Take  any  noble  miisi' 
cal  air,  and  you  find,  on  examining  it,  that  not  one  even  of 
the  faintest  or  shortest   notes   can  be   removed   without 


(.EC)'.  I.J  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  45 

destruction  to  the  whole  passage  in  whieh  it  occars  ;  and 
that  every  note  in  the  passage  is  twenty  times  more  beauti- 
ful so  introduced,  than  it  would  have  been  if  played  singly 
an  the  instrument.  Precisely  this  degree  of  arrangement  and 
relation  must  exist  between  every  toucli^  and  line  in  a  great 
picture.  You  may  consider  the  whole  as  a  prolonged  musi 
ca]  composition  :  its  parts,  as  separate  airs  connected  in  the 
story  ;  its  little  bits  and  fragments  of  colour  and  line,  aa 
separate  passages  or  bars  in  melodies ;  and  down  to  the  mi- 
nutest note  of  the  whole — down  to  the  minutest  toiicli^ — if 
there  is  one  that  can  be  spared — that  one  is  doing  mischief 
Remember  therefore  always,  you  have  two  characters  in 
which  all  greatness  of  art  consists: — First,  the  earnest  and 
intense  seizing  of  natural  fiicts;  then  the  ordering  those 
facts  by  strength  of  human  intellect,  so  as  to  make  them, 
for  all  who  look  upon  them,  to  the  utmost  serviceable,  me- 
ti.orable,  and  beautiful.  And  thus  great  art  is  nothing  else 
than  the  type  of  strong  and  noble  life;  for,  as  the  igno- 
ble perscji),  in  his  dealings  with  all  that  occurs  in  the  world 
about  him,  first  sees  nothing  clearly, — looks  nothing  fairly 
m  the  face,  and  th(Mi  allows  himself  to  be  swept  away  bj 
tlie  train])ling  torrent,  and  unescapable  force,  of  tlie  thing; 
ihat  he  would  not  foresee,  and  could  not  understand:  sc 
the  noble  person,  looking  the  facts  of  the  world  full  in  the 
fjujo,  and  fatlioming  them  with  deep  faculty,   then  deala 

*  Literally.     I  know  how  exa^'gerated  Lliis  statement  soundo;  but  1 
menu  it, — every  syllable  of  it. — See  Af  pendix  IV 


46  DETERIOKATIVK    POWER    OF  [LEtT    1 

with  them  in  unalarmed  intelligence  and  unhui  rieJ  strength, 
and  becomes,  with  his  human  intellect  and  will,  no  un 
conscious  nor  insignificant  agent,  in  consummating  thei) 
good,  and  restraining  their  evil. 

Thus  in  human  life  you  have  the  two  fields  of  rightful 
toil  for  ever  distinguished,  yet  for  ever  associated;  Truth 
first— plan  or  design,  founded  thereon ;  so  in  art,  you  have 
the  same  two  fields  for  ever  distinguished,  for  ever  asso 
elated ;  Truth  first — plan,  or  design,  founded  thereon 

Now  hitherto  there  is  not  the  least  difficulty  in  the 
subject ;  none  of  you  can  look  for  a  moment  at  any  great 
sculptor  or  painter  without  seeing  the  full  bearing  of  these 
principles.  But  a  difficulty  arises  when  you  come  to  exa 
mine  the  art  of  a  lower  order,  concerned  with  furniture 
and  manufacture,  for  in  that  art  the  element  of  design 
enters  without,  apparently,  the  element  of  truth.  You 
have  often  to  obtain  beauty  and  display  invention  without 
direct  representation  of  nature.  Yet,  respecting  all  these 
things  also,  the  principle  is  perfectly  simple.  If  the 
designer  of  furniture,  of  cups  and  vases,  of  dress  patterns, 
and  the  like,  exercises  himself  continually  in  the  imitation 
of  natural  form  in  some  leading  division  of  his  work;  then, 
holding  by  this  stem  of  life,  he  may  pass  down  into  all 
kinds  of  merely  geometrical  or  formal  design  with  perfec 
safety,  and  with  noble  results.*     Thus  Giotto,  being  prima 

*  This  principle,  here  cursorily  stated,  is  one  of  the  chief  subjects  c 
•nquiry  in  the  following  Lectures. 


r.ECT.   I.]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  47 

rily  a  figure  painter  and  sculptor,  is,  secondarily,  the  riches! 
of  all  designers  in  mere  mosaic  of  coloured  bars  and  triangles: 
thus  Benvenuto  Cellini,  being  in  all  the  higher  branches  of 
metal  work  a  perfect  imitator  of  nature,  is  in  all  its  lowei 
branches  the  best  designer  of  curve  for  lips  of  cups  and 
handles  of  vases;  thus  Holbein,  exercised  primarily  in  the 
noble  art  of  truthful  portraiture,  becomes,  secondarily,  the 
most  exquisite  designer  of  embroideries  of  robe,  and 
blazonries  on  wall ;  and  thus  Michael  Angelo,  exercised 
primarily  in  the  drawing  of  body  and  limb,  distributes  in 
the  mightiest  masses  the  order  of  his  pillars,  and  in  the 
loftiest  shadow  the  hollows  of  his  dome.  But  once  quit 
hold  of  this  living  stem,  and  set  yourself  to  the  designing 
of  ornamentation,  cither  in  the  ignorant  play  of  your  own 
heartless  fancy,  as  the  Indian  does,  or  according  to  received 
application  of  heartless  laws,  as  the  modern  European  does, 
and  there  is  but  one  word  for  you — Death  : — death  of 
every  healthy  fiiculty,  and  of  every  noble  intelligence, 
incapacity  of  understanding  one  great  work  that  man  has 
ever  done,  or  of  doing  anything  that  it  shall  be  helpfu  for 
him  to  behold.  You  have  cut  yourselves  off  voluntarily 
presumptuously,  insolently,  from  the  whole  teaching  of 
your  Maker  in  His  Universe ;  you  have  cut  yourselves  off 
from  it,  not  becaus'e  you  were  forced  to  mechanical  labour 
<br  your  bread — not  because  your  fate  had  a})pointe(l  you 
to  wear  away  your  lif^  in  walled  chambers,  or  dig  your  life 
DUt  of  dusty  furrows;    but,  when  your  whole  profession, 


i8  DETERIORATIVE    POWER    OF  [LECT,  1 

your  whole  occupation — all  the  necessities  and  chances  of 
your  existence,  led  you  straight  to  the  feet  of  the  great 
Teacher,  and  thrust  you  into  the  treasury  of  His  works; 
vhere  you  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  live  by  gazing,  and 
;o  grow  by  wondering; — wilfully  you  bind  up  your  eyes 
ft'oni  the  splendour — wilfully  bind  up  your  life-blood  from 
its  beating — wilfully  turn  your  backs  upon  all  tlie  majes- 
ties of  Omnipotence — wilfully  snatch  your  hands  from  all 
the  aids  of  love ;  and  what  can  remain  for  you,  but  help- 
lessness and  blindness, — except  the  worse  fate  than  the 
being  blind  yourselves — that  of  becoming  Leaders  of  the 
blind  ? 

Do  not  think  that  I  am  speaking  under  excited  feeling, 
or  in  any  exaggerated  terms.  I  have  written  the  words 
L  use,  that  I  may  know  what  I  say,  and  that  you,  if  you 
choose,  may  see  what  I  have  said.  For,  indeed,  I  have  set 
before  you  to-uight,  to  the  best  of  my  power,  the  sum  and 
substance  of  the  system  of  art  to  the  promulgation  of  which 
I  have  devoted  ray  life  hitherto,  and  intend  to  devote  what 
of  life  may  still  be  spared  to  me.  I  have  had  but  one 
steady  aim  in  all  that  I  have  ever  tried  to  teach,  namely — 
to  declare  that  whatever  was  great  in  human  art  was  the 
expression  of  man's  delight  in  God's  work. 

And  at  this  time  I  have  endeavoured  to  prove  to  you^-if 
you  investigate  the  subject  you  may  more  entirely  prove  to 
yourselves — that  no  school  ever  advanced  far  which  had 
r  ot  the  love  of  natural  fact  as  a  primal  energy.     But  it  is 


LECT.  I.J  CONVENTIONAL    ART. 

Still  nioro  important  tor  you  to  be  iu-^surt'd  that  the  con- 
ditions of  hfe  and  death  in  the  art  of  nations  are  also  the 
conditions  of  life  and  death  in  your  own ;  and  that  you 
have  it,  each  in  his  power  at  this  very  instant,  to  determine 
in  which  direction  his  steps  are  turning.  It  seems  almost  a 
terrible  thing  to  tell  you,  that  all  here  have  all  the  power 
of  knowing  at  once  what  hope  there  is  for  them  as  artists: 
you  would,  perhaps,  like  better  that  there  was  some  unre- 
movable doubt  about  the  chances  of  the  future — some  pos 
sibility  that  you  might  be  advancing,  in  unconscious  ways, 
towards  unex])ectcd  successes — some  excuse  or  reason  for 
going  abt)ut,  as  students  do  so  oftL'ii,  to  this  master  or  the 
other,  asking  him  if  they  have  genius,  and  wliether  they 
are  doing  right,  and  gathering,  from  his  careless  or  formal 
i-eplies,  vague  flashes  of  encouragement,  or  fitfulnesses  of 
despair.  There  is  no  need  for  this — no  excuse  for  it.  All 
of  you  have  the  trial  of  yourselves  in  your  own  power; 
each  may  undergo  at  this  instant,  before  his  own  judgment 
scat,  the  ordeal  by  fire.  Ask  yourselves  what  is  the  lead- 
ing motive  which  actuates  you  while  you  are  at  woi-k.  I 
do  not  ask  you  what  your  leading  motive  is  for  working — 
that  is  a  dilferent  thing;  you  may  have  families  to  suj^port 
— parents  to  help — brides  to  win  ;  ^-ou  may  have  all  these, 
or^jther  such  sacred  and  pie-eminent  motives,  to  press  the 
morning's  labour  and  promj)t  the  twilight  thought.  But 
when  you  are  fairly  at  tln"  work,  what  is  the  motive  then 
which  tells  upon  every  loueh  of  it?     If  it  is  the  love,  of  that 

'6 


50  DETERIORATIVE    POWER   OF  [LECT.  1 

which  your  work  represents— if,  being  a  landscape  painter, 
it  is  love  of  hills  and  trees  that  moves  you — if,  being  a 
figure  painter,  it  is  love  of  human  beauty  and  human  soul 
that  moves  you — if,  being  a  flower  or  animal  painter,  it  is 
love,  and  wonder,  and  delight  in  petal  and  in  limb  that 
move  you,  then  the  Spirit  is  upon  you,  and  the  earth  is 
yours,  and  the  fulness  thereof.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
is  petty  self-complacency  in  your  own  skill,  trust  in  precepts 
and  laws,  hope  for  academical  or  popular  approbation,  or 
avarice  of  wealth, — it  is  quite  possible  that  by  steady  indus- 
try, or  even  by  fortunate  chance,  you  may  win  the  applause, 
the  position,  the  fortune,  that  you  desire ;— but  one  touch 
of  true  art  you  will  never  lay  on  canvas  or  on  stone  as 
long  as  you  live. 

Make,  then,  your  choice,  boldly  and  consciously,  for  one 
way  or  other  it  must  be  made.  On  the  dark  and  dangerous 
side  are  set,  the  pride  which  delights  in  self-contemplation — 
the  indolence  which  rests  in  unquestioned  forms — the  igno- 
rance that  despises  what  is  fairest  among  God's  creatures, 
and  the  dulness  that  denies  what  is  marvellous  in  His  work 
ing :  there  is  a  life  of  monotony  for  j^our  own  souls,  and  of 
misguiding  for  those  of  others.  And,  on  the  other  side,  is 
open  to  your  choice  the  life  of  the  crowned  spirit,  moving 
as  a  light  in  creation — discovering  always — illuminat]y?g 
always,  gaining  CY&ry  hour  in  strength,  yet  bowed  dowc 
every  hour  into  deeper  humility ;  sure  of  being  right  in  its 
aim,  sure  of  being  irresistible  in   its  progress;  happy  in 


l.ECT.  I.]  CONVENTIONAL   ART.  61 

what  it  has  securely  done — happier  in  what,  day  by  day,  i1 
may  as  securely  hope ;  happiest  at  the  close  of  life,  when 
the  right  hand  begins  to  forget  its  cunning,  to  remember, 
that  there  never  was  a  touch  of  the  chisel  or  the  pencil  it 
wielded,  but  has  added  to  the  knowledge  and  quickened 
the  happiness  of  mankind. 


LECTUEE  n. 

THE   UNITY    OF   AttI, 
Port  of  an  Address*  delivered  at  Manchester,  \Uh  March,  186i». 

It  is  sometimes  mj  pleasant  duty  to  visit  other  cities,  in 
the  hope  of  being  able  to  encourage  their  art  students  ;  bul 
here  it  is  my  pleasanter  privilege  to  come  for  encourage- 
ment myself,  I  do  not  know  when  I  have  received  so 
much  as  from  the  report  read  this  evening  by  Mr.  Hammers- 
ley,  bearing  upon  a  subject  which  has  caused  me  great 
anxiety.  For  I  have  always  felt  in  my  own  pursuit  of  art, 
and  in  ray  endeavours  to  urge  the  pursuit  of  art  on  others, 
that  while  there  are  many  advantages  now  that  never 
existed  before,  there  are  certain  grievous  difficulties  exist- 

*  I  was  prevented,  by  press  of  other  engagements,  from  preparing 
this  address  witli  the  care  I  wished  ;  and  forced  to  trust  to  such  expres- 
sion as  I  could  give  at  tlie  moment  to  the  points  of  principal  impoil- 
ancc ;  reading,  however,  the  close  of  the  preceding  lecture,  which  I 
thought  contained  some  truths  that  would  bear  repetition.  The  whole 
was  reported,  better  than  it  deserved,  by  Mr.  Pitman,  of  the  Alanches- 
ter  Courier,  and  published  nearly  verbatim.  I  have  here  extracted, 
fros.  ihepubUshed  report,  the  facts  which  I  wish  especially  to  enforce; 
and  have  a  little  cleared  their  expression;  its  loose  and  colloquial 
character  I  cannot  now  help,  unless  by  re-writing  the  whole,  wliich  i( 
leems  not  worth  while  to  do. 


r.ECT.  II.]  THE    UNITY   OF   AR'l.  b'6 

ing,  just  in  the  very  cause  that  is  giving  the  stimulus  tc 
m-t — in  the  immense  spread  of  the  manufactures  of  every 
country  whicli  is  now  attending  vigorously  to  art.  We 
find  that  manuficture  and  art  are  now  going  on  always 
together ;  that  where  there  is  no  manufxeturc  there  is  no 
;irt.  I  know  how  much  there  is  uf  pretended  art  where 
there  is  no  manufacture:  there  is  much  in  Italy,  for 
instance;  no  country  makes  so  bold  pretence  to  the  pro- 
duction of  new  art  as  Italy  at  this  moment ;  yet  no  country 
produces  so  little.  If  you  glance  over  the  map  of  Europe, 
you  will  linil  that  where  the  manufactures  are  strongest, 
there  art  also  is  strongest.  And  yet  I  always  felt  that  tliere 
was  an  immense  difficulty  to  be  encountered  by  the  student.^ 
who  were  in  these  centres  of  modern  movement.  They 
had  to  avoid  the  notion  that  art  and  manufacture  were  in 
any  respect  one.  Art  may  be  healthily  associated  with 
manufacture,  and  probably  in  future  will  always  be  so ;  bui 
the  student  must  be  strenuously  warned  against  supjiosing 
that  they  can  ever  be  one  and  the  same  thing,  that  art  can 
ever  be  followed  on  the  principles  of  inanuficture.  ICacl^ 
must  be  followed  separately ;  the  one  must  influence  the  other, 
l>ut  each  must  be  kej)t  distinctly  se})arate  from  the  other. 

It  would  be  well  if  all  students  would  keep  clearly  in 
their  mind  the  real  distinction  between  those  words  which 
we  use  so  often,  "Manufacture,"  "Art,"  and  "Fine  Art." 
"  Manufacti:i{k"  is,  according  to  the  etymology  and  right 
iis<'  of  the  word,  "the  making  of  anything  by  hands,"— 


54  THE    UNITY   UF   ART.  [LECT.  II 

directly  or  indirectly,  with  or  without  the  help  of  instru- 
ments or  machines.  Anything  proceeding  from  the  hand 
of  man  is  manufacture ;  but  it  must  have  proceeded  from 
his  hand  only,  acting  mechanically,  and  uninfluenced  at 
the  moment  by  direct  intelligence. 

Then,  secondly,  Art  is  the  operation  of  the  hand  and 
the  intelligence  of  man  together :  there  is  an  art  of  making 
machinery ;  there  is  an  art  of  building  ships ;  an  art  of 
making  carriages;  and  so  on.  All  these,  properly  called 
Arts,  but  not  Fine  Arts,  are  pursuits  in  which  the  hand  of 
man  and  his  head  go  together,  working  at  the  same  instant. 

Then  Fine  Art  is  that  in  which  the  hand,  the  head,  and 
the  heart  of  man  go  together. 

Recollect  this  triple  group;  it  will  help  you  to  solve 
many  difficult  problems.  And  remember  that  thougli  the 
hand  must  be  at  the  bottom  of  everything,  it  must  also  go 
to  the  top  of  everything ;  for  Fine  Art  must  be  produced 
by  the  hand  of  man  in  a  much  greater  and  clearer  sense 
than  manufacture  is.  Fine  Art  must  always  be  produced 
by  the  subtlest  of  all  machines,  which  is  the  human  hand. 
No  machine  yet  contrived,  or  hereafter  contrivable,  will 
ever  equal  the  fine  machinery  of  the  human  fingers. 
Thoroughly  perfect  art  is  that  which  proceeds  from  the 
he.irt,  which  involves  all  the  noble  emotions; — associates 
with  tl=ese  the  head,  yet  as  inferior  to  the  heart;  and  the 
hand,  yet  as  inferior  to  the  lieartand  head  ;  antl  thus  brings 
out  the  whole  mm. 


I.ECT,  II.]  THE    UNITY    OF   ART.  56 

Hence  it  follows  that  since  Manufacture  is  simply  the 
operation  of  the  hand  of  man  in  producing  that  which  i?i 
useful  to  him,  it  essentially  separates  itself  from  the  emo 
tioiis;  when  emotions  interfere  with  machinery  they  spoil  it, 
machinery  must  go  evenly,  without  emotion.  But  the  Fine- 
Arts  cannot  go  evenly  ;  they  always  must  have  emotion 
ruling  their  mechanism,  and  until  the  pupil  begins  to  feel, 
and  until  all  he  does  associates  itself  with  the  current  of  his 
feeling,  he  is  not  an  artist.  But  pupils  in  all  the  schools  in 
this  cc^ntry  are  now  exposed  to  all  kinds  of  temptations 
which  blunt  their  feelings.  I  constantly  feel  discouraged 
in  addressing  them  because  I  know  not  how  to  tell  them 
boldly  what  they  ought  to  do,  when  I  feel  how  practically 
difficult  it  is  for  them  to  do  it.  There  are  all  sorts  of 
demands  made  upon  them  in  every  direction,  and  money  is 
to  be  made  in  every  conceivable  way  but  the  right  way. 
If  you  paint  as  you  ought,  and  study  as  you  ought,  depend 
upon  it  the  public  will  take  no  notice  of  you  for  a  long 
while.  If  you  study  wrongly,  and  try  to  draw  the  atten- 
tion of  the  public  upon  you, — supposing  you  to  be  clevei 
students — you  will  get  swift  reward ;  but  the  reward  docs 
not  come  fast  when  it  is  sought  wisely  ;  it  is  always  held 
aloof  for  a  little  while ;  the  right  roads  of  early  life  are  very 
quiet  ones,  hedged  in  from  nearly  all  help  or  praise.  Bui 
the  wrong  roads  are  noisy, — vociferous  everywhere  with  all 
kinds  of  dciuand  upon  you  for  art  which  is  not  properly 
art  at  all ;  and  in  the  various  meetings  of  modern  iiitcresLs. 


66  THE    UNITY   OF    ART.  [LECT    li 

money  is  to  be  made  in  every  way ;  bat  art  is  t(3  be  followed 
oulj  in  one  way.  That  is  wliat  I  want  mainly  to  say  to 
vou,  or  if  not  to  you  yours(3lves  (for,  from  what  I  havf 
heard  from  your  excellent  master  to  night,  I  know  you  are 
going  on  all  rightly),  you  must  let  me  say  it  through  you 
to  others.  Our  Schools  of  Art  are  confused  by  the  various 
teachinsT  and  various  interests  that  are  now  abroad  among 
us.  Everybody  is  talking  about  art,  and  writing  about  it, 
and  more  or  less  interested  in  it ;  everybody  wants  art,  and 
there  is  not  art  for  everybody,  and  few  who  talk  knojjr  what 
they  are  talking  about ;  thus  students  are  led  in  all  variable 
ways,  while  there  is  only  one  wa\^  in  which  they  can  make 
steady  progress,  for  true  art  is  always  and  will  be  always 
one.  Whatever  changes  may  be  made  in  the  customs  of 
society,  whatever  new  machines  we  may  invent,  whatever 
new  manufactures  w^c  may  supply,  Fine  Art  must  remain 
what  it  was  two  thousand  years  ago,  in  the  days  of  Phidias; 
two  thousand  years  hence,  it  will  be,  in  all  its  principles, 
and  in  all  its  great  effects  upon  the  mind  of  man,  just  the 
same.  Observe  this  that  I  say,  please,  carefully,  for  I  mean 
it  to  the  very  utmost.  There  is  hut  one  right  ivay  of  doing  any 
'jiven  thing  required  of  an  artid;  there  may  be  a  hundred 
wrong,  deficient,  or  mannered  ways,  but  there  is  only  one 
complete  and  right  way.  Whenever  two  artists  are  trying 
to  do  the  same  thing  with  the  same  materials,  and  do  it  in 
different  ways,  one  of  them  is  wrong ;  he  ma}"  be  charm- 
ingly wrong,  or  impressively  wrong- -various  circumstances 


r.KGT.  II.]  THE    UNITY    OF    ART.  57 

in  his  temper  niny  make  his  wrong  ])lcasantcr  than  any  per 
son's  right;  it  may  for  him.  under  his  given  hmitations  oi 
knowledge  or  temper,  be  better  perhaps  that  he  should  err 
a.  Ills  own  way  than  try  for  anybody  else's — but  for  all 
that  his  way  is  wrong,  and  it  is  essential  for  all  masters  ol 
schools  to  know  what  the  right  way  is,  and  what  right  ai't 
is,  and  to  see  how  simple  and  how  single  all  right  art  has 
been,  since  the  beginning  of  it. 

But  farther,  not  only  is  there  but  one  way  of  doituj 
things^  rightly,  but  there  is  only  one  way  of  seeing  them, 
and  that  is,  seeing  the  whole  of  them,  without  any  choice, 
or  more  intense  percejjtion  of  one  point  than  another,  ow- 
ing to  our  special  idiosyncrasies.  Thus,  when  Titian  oi 
Tintoret  look  at  a  human  being,  they  see  at  a  glance  the 
whole  of  its  nature,  outside  and  in;  all  that  it  has  of  form, 
of  colour,  of  passion,  or  of  thought;  saintliness,  and  love- 
liness; fleshly  bod}^,  and  spiritual  power;  grace,  or  strength, 
or  softness,  or  whatsoever  other  quality,  those  men  will  see 
to  the  full,  and  so  paint,  that,  when  nan-ower  people  come 
to  look  at  what  they  have  done,  eveiy  one  may,  if  he- 
chooses,  find  his  own  special  pleasure  in  the  work.  The 
sensualist  will  find  sensuality  in  Titian  ;  the  thinker  will 
lind  thought ;  the  saint,  sanctity  ;  the  colourist,  colour ;  the 
anatomist,  form  ;  and  yet  the  picture  will  never  be  a  popu- 
lar one  in  the  full  sense,  for  none  of  these  narrower  p(>ojile 
will  (bid  ihi'ii-  sp(>cial  taste  so  alone  consulted,  as  that  the 
qualities   which   would  ensure  their  gratification   shall   be 

3* 


58  THE    UNITY   OF   ART.  [LECT.  U 

sifted  or  separated  from  others;  they  are  checked  by  tho 
presence  of  the  other  qualities  which  ensure  the  gratifica- 
tion of  other  men.  Thus,  Titian  is  not  soft  enough  for  the 
sensualist,  Correggio  suits  him  better ;  Titian  is  not  defined 
enough  for  the  formalist, — Leonardo  suits  him  better ;  Ti- 
tian is  not  pure  enough  for  the  religionist, — Raphael  suits 
him  better ;  Titian  is  not  polite  enough  for  the  man  of  the 
world, — Vandyke  suits  him  better;  Titian  is  not  forcible 
enough  for  the  lovers  of  the  picturesque, — Rembrandt  suits 
him  better.  So  Correggio  is  popular  with  a  certain  set,  and 
Vandyke  with  a  certain  set,  and  Rembrandt  with  a  certain 
set  All  are  great  men,  but  of  inferior  stamp,  and  tlierefore 
Vandyke  is  popular,  and  Rembrandt  is  popular,*  but  nobody 
cares  much  at  heart  about  Titian ;  only  there  is  a  strange 
under-current  of  everlasting  murmur  about  his  name,  which 
means  the  deep  consent  of  all  great  men  that  he  is  greater 
than  they — the  consent  of  those  who,  having  sat  long 
enough  at  his  feet,  have  found  in  that  restrained  harmony  of 
his  strength  there  are  indeed  depths  of  each  balanced  power 
more  wonderful  than  all  those  separate  manifestations  in 
inferior  painters:  that  there  is  a  softness  more  exquisite 
than  Correggio's,  a  purity  loftier  than  Leonardo's,  a  force 
mightier  than  Rembrandt's,  a  sanctity  more  solemn  even 
than  RafFaelle's. 

Do  not  suppose  that  in  saying  this  of  Titian,  I  am  return- 

*  And  Murillo,  of  all  true  painters  the  narrowest,  feeblest,  and  mosl 
wperficial,  for  those  reasons  the  most  popular. 


LECT.  II.]  THE    UNITY    OF    AKT.  5J» 

ing  to  the  old  eclectic  theories  of  Bologna ;  for  all  those 
eclectic  theories,  observe,  were  based,  not  upon  an  endeavour 
to  unite  the  various  characters  of  nature  (which  it  is  possi 
ble  to  do),  but  the  various  narrownesses  of  taste,  which  it 
is  impossible  to  do.  Rubens  is  not  more  vigorous  thari 
Titian,  but  less  vigorous ;  but  because  he  is  so  narrow- 
minded  as  to  enjoy  vigour  only,  he  refuses  to  give  the  other 
qualities  of  nature,  which  would  interfere  with  that  vigour 
and  with  our  perception  of  it.  Again,  Kembrandt  is  not  a 
greater  master  of  chiaroscuro  than  Titian ; — he  is  a  less 
master,  but  because  he  is  so  narrow-minded  as  to  enjoy 
chiaroscuro  only,  he  withdraws  from  you  the  splendour  of 
hue  which  would  interfere  with  this,  and  gives  you  only 
the  shadow  in  which  you  can  at  once  feel  it.  Now  all 
these  specialties  have  their  own  charm  in  their  own  way; 
and  there  are  times  when  the  particular  humour  of  each 
man  is  refreshing  to  us  from  its  very  distinctness  ;  but  the 
effort  to  add  any  other  qualities  to  this  refreshing  one 
instantly  takes  away  the  distinctiveness,  and  therefore  the 
exact  character  to  be  enjoyed  in  its  appeal  to  a  particular 
numour  in  us.  (^ur  enjoyment  arose  from  a  weakness 
meeting  a  weakness,  from  a  partiality  in  the  painter  fitting 
to  a  partiality  in  us,  and  giving  us  sugar  when  we  wanted 
Bugar,  and  myri'h  when  we  wanted  myrrh  ;  but  sugar  and 
myrrh  are  not  meat :  and  when  we  want  meat  and  bread, 
we  must  go  to  better  men. 

The  eclectic  schools  endeavoured  to  unite  these  opposite 


fiO  THE    UNITY    OF   ART.  [LECT.  II 

purtiiilities  and  weaknesses.  They  trained  themselves  im 
der  masters  of  exaggeration,  and  tried  to  unite  opposite  ex- 
aggerations. That  was  impossible.-  They  did  not  see  that 
the  only  possible  eclecticism  had  been  already  accomplish 
ed; — the  eclecticism  of  temperance,  which,  by  the  restrain! 
of  force,  gains  higher  force ;  and  by  the  self-denial  of  de- 
light, gains  higher  dehghf.  This  you  will  find  is  ultimate- 
ly the  case  with  every  true  and  right  master  ;  at  first,  while 
we  are  tyros  in  art,  or  before  we  have  earnestly  studied  the 
man  in  question,  we  shall  see  little  in  him;  or  perhaps  see, 
as  we  think,  deficiencies ;  we  shall  fancy  he  is  inferior  to 
this  man  in  that,  and  to  the  other  man  in  the  other';  but 
as  we  go  on  studying  him  we  shall  find  that  he  has  got  both 
that  and  the  other;  and  both  in  a  far  higher  sense  than  the 
man  who  seemed  to  possess  those  qualities  in  excess.  Thus 
in  Turner's  lifetime,  when  people  first  looked  at  him,  those 
who  liked  rainy  weather,  said  he  was  not  equal  to  Copley 
Fielding;  but  those  who  looked  at  Turner  long  enough 
found  that  he  could  he  much  more  wet  than  Copley  Field- 
ing, when  he  chose.  The  people  who  liked  force,  said  that 
"  Turner  was  not  strong  enough  for  them ;  he  was  effemi- 
nate; they  liked  De  Wint, — nice  strong  tone; — or  Cox — 
great^  greeny,  dark  masses  of  colour — solemn  feeling  of 
the  freshness  and  depth  of  nature; — they  liked  Cox- 
Turner  was  too  h(jt  for  them."  Had  they  looked  long 
enough  the}^  would  have  f  )und  that  he  had  far  more  force 
than    De  Wint,  far   more   freshness   than    Cox    when   he 


LEGT.  II.]  THP:    unity   OF   AKT.  61 

chose, — only  united  with  other  elements ;  and  that  he  didn't 
choose  to  be  cool,  if  nature  had  appointed  the  weather  to 
be  hot.  The  people  who  liked  Prout  said  "  Turner  had 
not  firmness  of  hand — he  did  not  know  enough  about  ar- 
chitecture— ^he  was  not  picturesque  enough."  Had  they 
looked  at  his  architecture  long,  they  would  have  found  thai 
it  contained  subtle  pieturesqueuesses,  infinitely  more  pictur 
csque  than  anything  of  Prout's.  People  who  liked  Callcott 
said  that  "Turner  was  not  correct  or  pure  enough— had  no 
classical  taste."  Had  they  looked  at  Turner  long  enough 
thej  would  have  found  him  as  severe,  when  he  chose,  ps 
the  greater  Poussin ; — Callcott,  a  mere  vulgar  imitator  A 
other  men's  high  breeding.  And  so  throughout  with  J] 
thorouglily  great  men,  their  strength  is  not  seen  at  fi/'st, 
precisely  because  they  unite,  in  due  place  and  measure, 
every  great  quality. 

Now  the  question  is,  wh(>t]i(!r,  as  students,  we  are  to 
Btudy  only  these  mightiest  men,  who  unite  all  greatness,  or 
whether  we  arc  to  study  the  works  of  inferior  men,  who 
present  us  with  the  greatness  which  we  particularl}'^  like  ? 
That  question  often  coines  before  me  when  I  see  a  strong 
idiosyncrasy  in  a  student,  and  he  asks  me  what  he  should 
etudy.  Shall  I  send  him  to  a  true  master,  who  docs  not 
present  the  quality  in  a  prominent  way  in  which  that  stu- 
dent delights,  or  send  him  to  a  man  with  whom  he  ha.s 
direct  sympathy  ?  It  is  a  hnrd  question.  For  very  cut  ious 
results  have  sometimes  been  brought  out,  especially  in  lat*» 


62  THE    UNITY    OP^   ART.  [LECT..  H 

years,  nt  t  only  by  students  following  their  own  bent,  bul 
by  tlieir  being  withdrawn  from  teaehing  altogether.  I  have 
just,  named  a  very  great  man  in  his  own  field — Prout  We 
all  know  his  drawings,  and  love  them :  they  have  a  pecu- 
liar character  which  no  other  architectural  drawings  ever 
possessed,  and  which  no  others  can  possess,  because  all 
Prout's  subjects  are  being  knocked  down  or  restored. 
(Prout  did  not  like  restored  buildings  any  more  than  I  do.) 
There  will  never  be  any  more  Prout  drawings.  Nor  could 
he  have  been  wliat  he  was,  or  expressed  with  that  myste- 
riously effective  touch  that  peculiar  delight  in  broken  and 
old  buildings,  unless  he  had  been  withdrawn  from  all  high 
art  influence.  You  know  that  Prout  was  bor^j  of  poor 
parents — that  he  was  educated  down  in  Cornwall ; — and 
that,  for  many  years,  all  the  art-teaching  he  had  was  his 
own,  or  the  fishermen's.  Under  the  keels  of  the  fishing- 
boats,  on  the  sands  of  our  southern  coasts,  Prout  learned 
all  that  he  needed  to  learn  about  art.  Entirely  by  himself, 
he  felt  his  way  to  this  particular  style,  and  became  the 
painter  of  pictures  which  I  think  we  should  all  regret  to  lose, 
li  becomes  a  very  difficult  question  what  that  man  would 
have  been,  had  he  been  brought  under  some  entirely  whole 
some  artistic  influence.  He  had  immense  gifts  of  composi- 
tion. I  do  not  know  any  man  who  had  more  power  of 
invention  than  Prout,  or  who  had  a  sublimer  instinct  iri 
his  treatment  of  things ;  but  being  entirely  withdrawn  from 
all  artistical  help,  he  blunders  his  way  to  that  sh  .^rt-coming 


I,ECT.  II.]  THE    UNITY   OF   AKT.  68 

representation,  wliich,  by  the  very  reason  of  its  sl.ort 
coming,  has  a  certain  charm  we  should  all  be  soriy  t<:)  lose 
And  therefore  I  feel  embarrassed  when  a  student  comes  to 
me,  in  whom  I  see  a  strong  instinct  of  that  kind :  and 
cannot  tell  whether  I  ought  to  say  to  him,  "Give  up  all 
your  studies  of  old  boats,  and  keep  away  from  the  sea-sh(jrc, 
and  come  up  to  the  Royal  Academy  in  London,  and  lo(jk  at 
nothing  but  Titian."  It  is  a  difficult  thing  to  make  up  one's 
mind  to  say  that.  However,  I  believe,  on  the  whole,  we 
may  wisely  leave  such  matters  in  the  hands  of  Providence ; 
that  if  we  have  the  power  of  teaching  the  right  to  any- 
body, we  should  teach  them  the  right ;  if  we  have  the  power 
of  showing  them  the  best  thing,  we  should  show  them  the 
best  thing;  there  will  always,  I  fear,  be  enough  want  of 
teaching,  and  enough  bad  teaching,  to  bring  out  very  curi- 
ous erratical  results  if  we  want  them.  So,  if  we  are  to 
teach  at  all,  let  us  teach  the  right  thing,  and  ever  the  right 
thing.  There  are  many  attractive  qualities  inconsistent 
with  rightness  ; — do  not  let  us  teach  them, — let  us  be  con- 
tent to  waive  them.  There  are  attractive  qualities  in  Burns, 
and  attractive  qualities  in  Dickens,  which  neither  of  those 
writers  would  have  possessed  if  the  one  had  been  edueatrd, 
and  the  other  had  beim  studying  higlu'i-  nature  than  tliatof 
e(x;kney  London  ;  but  those  attractive  qualities  are  not  such 
as  we  should  seek  in  a  school  of  literature.  If  we  want  to 
teacli  yo  ing  men  a  good  manner  of  writing,  we  should  teach 
it  from  Shakspeare, — not  fiMiu  IJuiiis;  from  Walter  Scott 


84  TIJE    UNITY    OF   ART.  [LECT.  II 

---and  not  from  Dickoiis.  And  I  believe  thai  our  schools 
of  painting  are  at  present  inefficient  in  their  action,  because 
thej  have  not  fixed  on  this  high  principle  what  are  the 
painters  to  whom  to  point ;  nor  boldly  resolved  to  point  to 
the  best,  if  determinable.  It- is  becoming  a  matter  of  stern 
necessity  that  they  should  give  a  simple  direction  to  the 
attrition  of  the  student,  and  that  they  should  say,  "  This  is 
the  mark  you  are  to  aim  at;  and  you  are  not  to  go  about  to 
the  print-shops,  and  peep  in,  to  see  how  this  engraver  does 
that,  and  the  other  engraver  does  the  other,  and  how  a  nice 
bit  of  character  has  been  caught  by  a  new  man,  and  why  this 
odd  picture  has  caught  the  popular  attention.  You  are  to 
have  nothing  to  do  with  all  that ;  you  are  not  -to  mind 
about  popular  attention  just  now ;  but  here  is  a  thing  which 
is  eternally  right  and  good :  you  are  to  look  at  that,  and  see 
if  you  cannot  do  something  eternally  right  and  good  too." 
But  suppose  you  accept  this  princij^le :  and  resolve  to 
look  to  some  great  man,  Titian,  or  Turner,  or  whomsoever 
it  may  be,  as  the  model  of  perfection  in  art; — then  the 
question  is,  since  this  great  man  pursued  his  art  in  Venice, 
or  in  the  fields  of  England,  under  totally  dilFcrent  condi- 
tions from  those  possible  to  us  now — how  are  you  to  make 
your  study  of  him  effective  here  in  Manchester?  how  bring 
It  down  into  patterns,  and  all  that  you  are  called  upon  aa 
operatives  to  produce  ?  how  make  it  the  means  of  your  live- 
hhood,  nnd  associate  inferior  branches  of  art  witli  this  gi-eal 
art?     That  may  become  a  serious  doubt  to  you.     You  maj 


LECT.  11.1  THE    UNITY   OF   ART.  66 

think  there  is  some  other  way  of  producing  cle\ci,  and 
pretty,  and  saleable  patterns  than  going  to  look  at  Titian, 
or  any  other  great  man.  And  that  brings  me  to  the  ques 
tion,  perhaps  the  most  vexed  question  of  all  amongst  us  just 
now,  between  conventional  and  perfect  art.  You  kno\M 
that  among  architects  and  artists  there  are,  and  have  been 
almost  always,  since  art  became  a  subject  of  much  discus 
sion,  two  parties,  one  maintaining  that  nature  should  be 
always  altered  and  modified,  and  that  the  artist  is  greater 
than  nature;  they  do  not  maintain,  indeed,  in  words,  but 
they  maintain  in  idea,  that  the  artist  is  greater  than  the 
Divine  Maker  of  these  things,  and  can  improve  them ;  while 
the  other  party  say  that  ho  cannot  improve  nature,  and  that 
nature  on  the  whole  should  improve  him.  That  is  the  real 
meaning  of  the  two  parties,  the  essence  of  them ;  the  prac- 
tical result  of  their  several  theories  being  that  the  Idealists 
are  always  producing  more  or  less  formal  conditions  of  art, 
and  the  Eealists  striving  to  produce  in  all  their  art  either 
some  image  of  nature,  or  record  of  nature ;  tbese,  observe, 
being  quite  different  tilings,  the  imago  being  a  resemblance, 
and  the  record,  something  which  will  give  information 
about  nature,  but  not  necessarily  imitate  it. 

***** 
You  may  separate  these  two  groups  of  artists  moie  dia 

■*  The  portion  of  tlie  loctuio  lifro  otiiitted  wap  a  recapit  jlation 
c!  that  part  of  llio  pn-vions  .me  uliidi  opjiopod  convtMitional  art  tc 
Dktural  Mil 


t)6  THE   UNITY  OF  ART.  [LECT.  11 

tinctly  in  your  fl  lind  as  those  who  seek  for  the  pleasure  of 
art,  in  the  relations  of  its  colours  and  lines,  without  caring 
to  convey  any  truth  with  it ;  and  those  who  seek  for  the 
t,ruth  first,  and  then  go  down  from  the  truth  to  the  pleasure 
of  colour  and  line.  Marking  those  two  bodies  distinctly  as 
jcparate,  and  thinking  over  them,  you  may  come  to  some 
rather  notable  conclusions  respecting  the  mental  disposi- 
tions which  are  involved  in  each  mode  of  study.  You  will 
find  that  large  masses  of  the  art  of  the  world  fall  definitely 
under  one  or  the  other  of  these  heads.  Observe,  pleasure 
first  and  truth  afterwards,  (or  not  at  all,)  as  with  the  Ara- 
bians and  Indians ;  or,  truth  first  and  pleasure  afterwaras, 
as  with  Angel ico  and  all  other  great  European  -painters. 
You  will  find  that  the  art  whose  end  is  pleasure  only  is  pre- 
eminentl}''  the  gift  of  cruel  and  savage  nations,  cruel  in  tem- 
per, savage  in  habits  and  conception ;  but  that  the  art  which 
is  especially  dedicated  to  natural  fact  always  indicates  a 
peculiar  gentleness  and  tenderness  of  mind,  and  that  all 
great  and  successful  work  of  that  kind  will  assuredly  be 
the  production  of  thoughtful,  sensitive,  earnest,  kind  men, 
large  in  their  views  of  life,  and  full  of  various  intellectual 
power.  And,  farther,  when  you  examine  the  men  in  whom 
the  gifts  of  art  are  variously  mingled,  or  universally 
mingled,  you  will  discern  that  the  ornamental,  or  pleasura- 
ble power,  though  it  may  be  possessed  by  good  men,  is  not 
in  itself  an  indication  of  their  goodness,  but  is  rather,  unless 
balane(}d  by  other  faculties,  indicative  of  violence  of  temper 


liECT.  II.]  THE    UNITY   OF  ART.  67 

inclining  to  cruelty  and  to  irreligion.  On  the  other  hand, 
so  sure  as  you  find  any  man  endowed  with  a  keen  and 
separate  faculty  of  representing  natural  fact,  so  surely  you 
will  find  that  man  gentle  and  upright,  full  of  nobleness  and 
breadth  of  thought.  I  will  give  you  two  instances,  the  first  pe- 
culiarly English,  and  another  peculiarly  interesting  because 
it  occurs  among  a  nation  not  generally  very  kind  or  gentle. 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that,  considering  all  the  disadvan- 
tages of  circumstances  and  education  under  which  his  genius 
was  developed,  there  was  perhaps  hardly  ever  born  a  man 
with  a  more  intense  and  innate  gift  of  insight  into  nature 
than  our  own  Sir  Josliua  Reynolds.  Considered  as  a 
painter  of  individuality  in  the  human  form  and  mind,  I 
think  him,  even  as  it  is,  the  prince  of  portrait  painters. 
Titian  paints  nobler  pictures,  and  Vandyke  had  nobler  sub 
jects,  but  neitlier  of  them  entered  so  subtly  as  Sir  Joshua 
did  into  the  minor  varieties  of  human  heart  and  temper; 
and  when  you  consider  that,  with  a  frightful  convention 
ality  of  social  habitude  all  around  him,  he  yet  conceived 
the  simplest  types  of  all  feminine  and  childish  loveliness ; — 
that  in  a  northern  climate,  and  with  gray,  and  white,  and 
black,  as  the  principal  colours  around  him,  he  yet  became 
a  colourist  who  can  be  crushed  by  none,  even  of  the  Vene- 
tians;— and  that  with  Dutch  painting  and  Dresden  china 
for  the  prevailing  types  of  art  in  the  saloons  of  his  day,  he 
threw  himself  at  once  at  the  feet  of  the  great  masters  of 
Ftaly,  and   aiose   from    their   feet   to  share  their  throne — J 


68  THE   UNITY   OF  ART.  [l  EOT.  II 

kno  V  not  that  in  the  whole  history  of  art  you  can  produce 
anolher  instance  of  so  strong,  so  unaided,  so  unerring  an 
instinct  for  all  that  was  true,  jDure,  and  noble. 

Now,  do  you  recollect  the  evidence  respecting  the  chaiao- 
ter  of  this  man, — the  two  points  of  bright  peculiar  evidence 
given  by  the  sayings  of  the  two  greatest  literary  men  of  his 
day,  Johnson  and  Goldsmith?  Johnson,  who,  as  you 
know,  was  always  Reynolds'  attached  friend,  had  but  one 
complaint  to  make  against  him,  that  he  hated  nobody  :— 
"Reynolds,"  he  said,  "you  hate  no  one  living;  I  like  a 
good  hater !"  Still  moi'c  significant  is  the  little  touch  in 
Goldsmith's  "  Retaliation."  You  recollect  how  in  that 
poem  he  describes  the  various  persons  who  met-  at  one  of 
their  dinners  at  St.  James's  Coffee-house,  each  person  being 
described  under  the  name  of  some  appropriate  dish.  You 
will  often  hear  the  concluding  lines  about  Reynolds  quoted— 
"  He  shifted  his  trumpet,"  &c. ; — 

less  often,  or  at  least  less  attentively,  the  preceding  ones 
far  more  important — 

"  Still  born  to  improve  us  in  every  part — 
His  pencil  our  faces,  his  manners  our  heart  /" 

and  never,  the  most  characteristic  touch  of  all,  near  tlio 
beginning : — 

"  Our  dean  shall  be  venison,  just  fresh  from  the  plains ; 
Our  Burke  shall  be  tongue,  -w'\i\\  a  garnish  of  brains 
To  make  out  tlie  tlinner,  full  certain  I  am, 
That  Rich  is  anchovy,  and  Reynolds  is  lamb." 


LECT.  II.]  THE   UNITY    OF   ART.  69 

The  other  painter  whom  I  would  give  you  as  an  instance 
of  this  gentleness  is  a  man  of  another  nation,  on  the  whole  J 
suppose  one  of  the  most  cruel  civilized  nations  in  the  world 
— the  Spaniards.  They  produced  but  one  great  painter 
only  one ;  but  he  among  the  very  greatest  of  paiutcis,  Ve- 
lasquez. You  would  not  suppose,  from  looking  at  Vela!=t- 
quez'  portraits  generally,  that  he  was  an  especially  kind  or 
good  man  ;  you  perceive  a  peculiar  sternness  about  them  , 
for  they  were  as  true  as  steel,  and  the  persons  whom  he  had 
to  paint  being  not  generally  kind  or  good  people,  they  were 
stern  in  expression,  and  Velasquez  gave  the  sternness ;  but 
he  had  precisely  the  same  intense  perception  of  truth,  tno 
same  marvellous  instinct  for  the  rendering  of  all  natural 
soul  and  all  natural  form  that  our  Reynolds  had.  Let  me, 
then,  read  you  his  character  as  it  is  given  by  Mr.  Stirling, 
of  Kier  : — 

"Certain  charges,  of  wliat  nature  we  are  not  informed,  brongln 
against  him  after  his  death,  made  it  necessary  for  liis  executor,  Fuen- 
Balida,  to  refute  them  at  a  pi'ivate  audience  granted  to  him  by  tlie  king 
for  that  i)iiri)Ose.  After  Hstening  to  the  defence  of  his  friend,  Philip 
iiiunediately  made  answer :  '  I  can  believe  all  you  say  of  the  excellent 
disposition  of  Diego  Velasquez.'  Having  lived  foi-  half  his  life  in  coui't,?, 
lie  was  yet  capable  both  of  gratitude  and  gentirosity,  and  in  the  miafor- 
tnnes,  he  could  remember  the  early  kindness  of  Olivares.  The  fiiend 
of  the  exile  of  Loecnes,  it  is  just  to  believe  that  ho  was  also  the  friend 
of  the  all-powerful  favomite  at  Bueiiretiro.  No  mean  jealousy  ever  in- 
flnenoi'd  his  conduct  to  his  brother  artists;  he  could  afford  not  only  to 
a<!knowl(>dge   the  merits,  but  to  forgive  the  malice,  of  his  rivals.     Hif 


70  THE   UNITY   OF  ART.  [LECT.  II 

oluiracter  was  of  that  rare  and  happy  kin\t\  in  lohich  high  inteikdum 
power  is  combined  with  indomitable  strength  of  will,  and  a  winning  sweei 
ness  of  temper,  and  which  seldom  foils  to  raise  the  possessor  above  his 
fellow- men,  making  his  life  a 

'  laurelled  victory,  and  smooth  success 
Be  strewed  before  his  feet.'  " 

I  am  sometimes  accused  of  trying  to  make  art  too  moral ; 
yet,  observe,  I  do  not  say  in  the  least  that  in  order  to  be  a 
good  painter  you  must  be  a  good  man ;  but  I  do  say  that 
in  order  to  be  a  good  natural  painter  there  must  be  strong 
elements  of  good  in  the  mind,  however  warped  by  other 
parts  of  the  character.  There  are  hundreds  of  other  gifts 
of  painting  which  are  not  at  all  involved  with  moral  condi- 
tions, but  this  one,  tlie  perception  of  nature,  is  never  given 
but  under  certain  moral  conditions.  Therefore,  now  you 
have  it  in  your  choice ;  here  are  your  two  paths  for  you :  it 
is  required  of  you  to  produce  conventional  ornament,  and 
you  may  approach  the  task  as  the  Hindoo  does,  and  as  the 
Arab  did,  without  nature  at  all,  with  the  chance  of 
approximating  your  disposition  somewhat  to  that  of  the 
Hindoos  and  Arabs;  or  as  Sir  Joshua  and  Velasquez  did, 
with,  not  the  chance,  but  the  certainty,  of  approximating 
your  disposition,  according  to  the  sincerity  of  your  effort — 
to  the  disposition  of  those  great  and  good  men. 

And  do  you  suppose  you  will  lose  anything  by  ap- 
proaching your  conventional  art  from  this  higher  side? 
Not  so.      I  called,   with  deliberate   measurement  of   my 


LECT.  II.]  THE    UNITY   OF   ART.  71 

expression,  long  ago,  the  decoration  of  the  Alhanibra 
"detestaLle,"  not  merely  because  indicative  of  base  condi- 
tions of  moral  being,  but  because  merely  as  decorative 
work,  however  captivating  in  some  respects,  it  is  wholly 
wanting  in  the  real,  deep,  and  intense  qualities  of  orna- 
mental art.  Noble  conventional  decoration  belongs  only 
to  three  periods.  First,  there  is  the  conventional  decora- 
tion of  the  Greeks,  used  in  subordination  to  their  sculpture 
There  are  then  the  noble  conventional  decoration  of  the 
early  Gothic  schools,  and  the  noble  conventional  arabesque 
of  the  great  Italian  schools.  All  these  were  reached  from 
above,  all  reached  by  stooping  from  a  knowledge  of  the 
human  form.  Depend  upon  it  you  will  find,  as  you  look 
more  and  more  into  the  matter,  that  good  subordinate 
ornament  has  ever  been  rooted  in  a  higher  knowledge; 
md  if  you  are  again  to  product;  anything  that  is  noble, 
you  must  have  the  liigher  knowledge  first,  and  descend  to 
all  lower  service;  condescend  as  much  as  you  like, — con- 
descension never  does  any  man  any  harm, — but  get  your 
tioble  standing  first.  So,  then,  without  any  scruple,  what- 
ever branch  of  art  you  may  be  inclined  as  a  student  here 
to  follow, — whatever  you  are  to  make  your  bread  by,  I 
say,  so  far  as  you  have  time  and  ])ower,  make  yourself 
first  a  noble  ;iiid  acc(;mplished  artist;  understand  at  least 
what  iioljltj  uiid  accomplished  art  is,  and  then  you  will  be 
i))le  to  ap[)ly  your  knowledge  to  all  service  whatsoever 
I  am   now  going  to  ask   your  permission  to  n;ini(^   the 


72  THE   UNITY   OF   ART.  [LECT.  U 

masters  wbom  I  think  it  would  be  well  if  we  could  agree, 
in  oiir  Schools  of  Art  in  England,  to  consider  our  leaders 
The  first  and  chief  I  will  not  myself  presume  to  name ;  he 
fcihaii  be  distinguished  for  you  by  the  authority  of  those 
two  great  painters  of  whom  we  have  just  been  speaking — 
lleynolds  and  Yelasquez.  You  may  remember  that  in 
your  Manchester  Art  Treasures  Exhibition  the  most 
impressive  things  were  the  works  of  those  two  men — 
nothing  told  upon  the  eye  so  much ;  no  other  pictures 
retained  it  with  such  a  persistent  power.  Now,  I  have  the 
testimony,  first  of  Keynolds  to  Yelasquez,  and  then  of 
Velasquez  to  the  man  whom  I  want  you  to  take  as  the 
master  of  all  your  English  schools.  The  testimony  of 
lleynolds  to  Yelasquez  is  very  striking.  I  take  it  from 
some  fragments  which  have  just  been  published  by  Mr. 
William  Cotton — precious  fragments — of  Keynolds'  diaries, 
which  I  chanced  \ij)on  luckily  as  I  was  coming  down  here: 
for  1  was  going  to  take  Yelasquez'  testimony  alone,  and 
then  fell  upon  this  testimony  of  Eeynolds  to  Yelasquez, 
written  most  fortunately  in  Eeynolds'  own  hand — you 
may  see  the  manuscript.  "  What  we  are  all,"  said  Rey- 
nolds, "  attempting  to  do  with  great  labor,  Velasquez  does  at 
onceV  Just  think  what  is  implied  when  a  man  of  the 
enormous  power  and  facility  that  Reynolds  had,  says  he 
was  "  trying  to  do  with  great  labor"  what  Yelasquez  "  did 
at  once." 

Having    thus  Reynolds'  testimony  to  Yelasquez,  I  will 


fiECT.  II.]  THE    UNITY   OF    ART.  78 

take  "Velasquez'  testimony  to  somebody  else.  You  know 
that  Velasquez  was  sent  by  Philip  of  Spain  to  Italy,  to  buy 
pictures  for  him.  He  went  all  over  Italy,  saw  the  living 
artists  there,  and  all  their  best  pictures  when  freshly  painted, 
so  that  he  had  every  opportunity  of  judging;  and  never 
was  a  man  so  capable  of  judging.  He  went  to  Rome  and 
ordered  various  works  of  living  artists ;  and  while  there, 
he  was  one  day  asked  by  Salvator  Rosa  what  he  thought  of 
Raphael.  His  reply,  and  the  ensuing  conversation,  are  thus 
reported  by  Boschini,  in  curious  Italian  verse,  which,  thus 
translated  by  Dr.  Donaldson,  is  quoted  in  Mr.  Stirling's  Life 
of  Velasquez: — 

"  The  master"  [Velasquez]  "  stiffly  bowed  his  figure  tall 
And  said,   '  For  Rafael,  to  speak  the  truth — 
I  always  was  plain-spoken  from  my  youth — 
I  cannot  say  I  like  his  works  at  all.' 

"  *  Well,'  said  the  other"  [Salvator],  "  '  if  you  can  run  down 
So  great  a  man,  I  really  cannot  see 
What  you  can  find  to  like  in  Italy ; 
To  him  wc  all  agree  to  give  the  crown.' 

"  Diego  answered  thus  :  '  I  saw  in  Venice 
The  true  test  of  the  good  and  beautiful  ; 
First  in  my  judgment,  ever  stands  that  school, 
And  Titian  first  of  all  Italian  men  is.' " 

"  Tizian  ze  quel  che  porta  la  handier  a." 

Learn  that  line  by  heart,  and  act,  at  all  events  for  some  time 


74  THE    UNITY    OF   AllT.  [LECT.  11. 

io  coinu,  upon  Velasquez'  opinion  in  that  matter.  Titian  is 
much  the  safest  master  for  you.  Raphael's  power,  such  aa 
it  was,  and  great  as  it  was,  depended  wholly  upon  transcen- 
dental characters  in  his  mind ;  it  is  "  Raphaclesque,"  pro- 
perly so  called ;  but  Titian's  power  is  simply  the  power  of 
doing  right.  Whatever  came  bef  )re  Titian,  he  did  wholly 
as  it  ought  to  be  done.  Do  not  suppose  that  now  in  recom- 
mending Titian  to  you  so  strongly,  and  speaking  of  nobody 
else  to-night,  I  am  retreating  in  anywise  from  what  some 
of  you  may  perhaps  recollect  in  my  works,  rtie  enthusiasm 
with  which  I  have  always  spoken  of  another  Venetian 
|)ainter.  There  are  three  Venetians  who  are  never  separated 
hi  my  mind  —  Titian,  Veronese,  and  Tintoret?  They  all 
have  their  own  unequalled  gifts,  and  Tintoret  especially  ha? 
imagination  and  depth  of  soul  which  I  think  renders  him 
indisputably  the  greatest  7nan  ;  l^ut,  equally  indisputably, 
Titian  is  the  greatest  painter;  and  therefore  the  greatest 
painter  who  ever  lived.  You  may  be  led  wrong  by  Tinto- 
ret* in  many  respects,  wrong  by  Kaphael  in  more ;  all  that 
you  learn  from  Titian  will  be  right.  Then,  with  Titian, 
take  Leonardo,  Rembrandt,  and  Albert  Durer.  I  name  those 
three  masters  for  this  reason :  Leonardo  has  powers  of  sub 
lie  drawing  which  are  peculiarly  applicable  in  many  ways 
to  the  drawing  of  fine  ornament,  and  are  very  useful  for 
nil   students.     Rembrandt  and   Durer    are  the  only  men 

•See  Appendix  I. — "  Right  and  Wrong." 


LECT.  II.]  THE    UNITY   OF   ART.  75 

whose  actual  work  of  hand  you  can  have  to  look  at ;  jou 
can  have  Rembrandt's  etchings,  or  Durer's  engravings  actu- 
ally hung  in  your  schools ;  and  it  is  a  main  point  for  the  stu- 
dent to  see  the  real  thing,  and  avoid  judging  of  masters  at 
second-hand.  As,  however,  in  obeying  this  principle,  you 
cannot  often  have  opportunities  of  studying  Venetian  paint- 
ing, it  is  desirable  that  you  should  have  a  useful  standard  of 
colour,  and  I  think  it  is  possible  for  you  to  obtain  this.  I 
cannot,  indeed,  without  entering  upon  ground  which  might 
involve  the  hurting  the  feelings  of  living  artists,  state  ex- 
actly what  I  believe  to  be  the  relative  position  of  various 
painters  in  England  at  present  with  respect  to  power  of 
colour.  But  I  may  say  this,  that  in  the  peculiar  gifts  of 
colour  which  will  be  useful  to  you  as  students,  there  are 
only  one  or  two  of  the  pre-Raphaelites,  and  William  Hunt, 
of  the  old  Water  Colour  Society,  who  would  be  safe  guides 
for  you ;  and  as  quite  a  safe  guide,  there  is  nobody  but 
William  Hunt,  because  the  pre-Raphaelites  are  all  more  or 
less  affected  by  enthusiasm  and  by  various  morbid  condi- 
tions of  intellect  and  temper;  but  old  William  Hunt — lam 
Borry  to  say  "old,"  but  I  say  it  in  a  loving  way,  for  every 
year  that  has  added  to  his  life  has  added  also  to  his  skill — 
William  Hunt  is  as  right  as  the  Venetians,  as  far  as  he  goes, 
and  what  is  more,  nearly  as  inimitable  as  they.  And  I  think 
if  we  manage  to  put  in  the  principal  schools  of  England  a 
little  bit  of  Hunt's  work,  and  make  that  somewhat  of  a 
standard  of  colour,  that  we  can   apply  his  principles  of 


76  THE    UNITY   OF   ART.  [LECT.  II 

coJouring  to  subjects  of  all  kinds.  Until  jou  have  had  a 
work  of  his  long  near  you;  nay,  unless  you  have  been 
labouring  at  it,  and  trying  to  copy  it,  you  do  not  know  the 
thoroughly  grand  qualities  that  are  concentrated  in  it. 
Simplicity,  and  intensity,  both  of  the  highest  character; — 
simplicity  of  aim,  and  intensity  of  power  and  success,  are 
involved  in  that  man's  unpretending  labour. 

Finally,  you  cannot  believe  that  I  would  omit  my  own 
favourite,  Turner.  I  fear  from  the  very  number  of  his 
works  left  to  the  nation,  that  there  is  a  disposition  now 
rising  to  look  upon  his  vast  bequest  with  some  contempt. 
I  beg  of  you,  if  in  nothing  else,  to  believe  me  in  this,  that 
you  cannot  further  the  art  of  England  in  any  way  more 
distinctly  than  by  giving  attention  to  every  fragment  that 
has  been  left  by  that  man.  The  time  will  come  when  his 
full  power  and  right  place  will  be  acknowledged ;  that  time 
will  not  be  for  many  a  day  yet :  nevertheless,  be  assured — 
as  for  as  you  are  inclined  to  give  the  least  faith  to  anything 
I  may  say  to  you,  be  assured — that  you  can  act  for  the 
good  of  art  in  England  in  no  better  way  than  by  using 
whatever  influence  any  of  you  have  in  any  direction  to 
urge  the  reverent  study  and  yet  more  reverent  preservation 
of  the  works  of  Turner.  I  do  not  say  "  the  exhibition" 
of  his  works,  for  we  are  not  altogether  ripe  for  it :  they  are 
Btill  too  far  above  us ;  uniting,  as  I  was  telling  you,  too 
many  qualities  for  us  yet  to  feel  fully  theii  range  and  theii 
influence ; — ^but  let  us  only  try  to  keep  them  safe  from 


I-KCT.  II.]  THE    UNITY    OF   ART.  77 

harm,  and  sliow  thoroughly  and  conveniently  what  wt 
show  of  them  at  all,  and  day  by  day  their  greatness  will 
dawn  upon  us  more  and  more,  and  be  the  root  of  a 
school  of  art  in  England,  which  I  do  not  doubt  may  be 
as  bright,  as  just,  and  as  refined  as  even  that  of  Venice 
herself.  The  dominion  of  the  sea  seems  to  have  been 
associated,  in  past  time,  with  dominion  in  the  arts  also  : 
Athens  had  them  together;  Venice  had  them  together; 
l)ut  by  so  much  as  our  authority  over  the  ocean  is  wider 
than  theirs  over  the  ^gean  or  Adriatic,  let  us  strive  to 
make  our  art  more  widely  beneficent  than  theirs,  though  it 
cannot  be  more  exalted  ;  so  working  out  the  fulfilment,  in 
their  wakening  as  well  as  their  warning  sense,  of  those 
great  words  of  the  aged  Tintoret : 

"Semi'ke  si  fa  il  Mare  Maggiobb." 


LECTURE  111. 

JfODERN   MANUFACTURE   AND   DllSmV 


A  LECTURK 


Delivered  at  Bradford,  March,  1859. 

It  is  with  a  deep  sense  of  necessity  for  your  indulgence  thai 
I  venture  to  address  you  to-night,  or  that  I  venture  at  any 
drne  to  address  the  pupils  of  schools  of  design  intended  foi 
the  advancement  of  taste  in  special  branches  of  manufac- 
ture. No  person  is  able  to  give  useful  and  definite  help 
towards  such  special  applications  of  art,  unless  he  is  en- 
tirely familiar  with  the  conditions  of  labour  and  natures  of 
material  involved  in  the  work  ;  and  mdefinite  help  ia 
little  better  than  no  help  at  all.  Nay,  the  few  remarks 
which  I  propose  to  lay  before  you  this  evening  will,  I  fear, 
be  rather  suggestive  of  difficulties  than  helpful  in  con- 
quering them  :  nevertheless,  it  may  not  be  altogether  un- 
serviceable to  define  clearly  for  you  (and  this,  at  least,  I 
am  able  to  do)  one  or  two  of  the  more  stern  general  obsta- 
cles which  stand  at  present  in  the  way  of  our  success  in  de- 
sign ;  and  to  warn  you  against  exertion  of  effort  in  any  vain 
or  wasteful  way,  till  these  main  obstacles  are  removed. 


LECT.  IIlJ  MODERN  MANUFACTURE   ETC.  7& 

The  first  of  tlicso  is  our  not  understanding  the  scope  and 
dignity  of  Decorative  design.  With  all  our  talk  about  it, 
the  very  meaning  of  the  words  "Decorative  art"  remains 
'v.'onfused  and  undecided.  I  want,  if  possible,  to  settle  thia 
question  for  you  to-night,  and  to  show  you  that  the  princi- 
ples on  which  you  must  work  are  likely  to  be  false,  in  pi'o- 
portion  as  they  are  narrow ;  true,  only  as.  they  are  founded 
on  a  perception  of  the  connection  of  all  branches  of  art  with 
each  other. 

Observe,  then,  first — the  only  essential  distinction  be- 
tween Decorative  and  other  art  is  the  being  fitted  for  a  fixed 
place ;  and  in  that  place,  related,  either  in  subordination  or 
command,  to  the  effect  of  other  pieces  of  art.  And  all  the 
greatest  art  which  tlie  world  has  produced  is  thus  fitted  for 
a  place,  and  subordinated  to  a  purpose.  There  is  no  exist 
ing  highest-order  art  but  is  decorative.  The  best  sculpture 
yet  produced  has  been  the  decoration  of  a  temple  front- 
the  best  painting,  the  decoration  of  a  room.  Raphaefrs  best 
doing  is  merely  the  wall-colouring  of  a  suite  of  apartments 
in  the  Vatican,  and  his  cartoons  were  made  for  tapestries. 
Correggio's  best  doing  is  the  decoration  of  two  small  church 
cupolas  at  Parma ;  Michael  Angclo's,  of  a  ceiling  in  the 
Pope's  private  chapel ;  Tintoret's,  of  a  ceiling  and  side  wall 
i  'ol(  xiging  to  a  charitable  society  at  Venice ;  while  Titian  and 
Veronese  threw  out  their  noblest  thoughts,  not  even  on  the 
in^side,  but  on  the  outside  of  the  common  brick  and  plastei 
walls  of  Venice. 


80  MODERN    MANUFACTURE  [LECT    HI 

Get  rid,  then,  at  once  of  any  idea  of  Decorative  art  being 
a  degraded  or  a  separate  kind  of  art.  Its  nature  or  essence 
IS  simply  its  being  fitted  for  a  definite  place;  and,  in  that 
place,  forming  part  of  a  great  and  harmonious  whole,  ir, 
companionship  with  other  art ;  and  so  far  from  this  being  a 
degradation  to  it — so  far  fi-om  Decorative  art  being  inferior 
to  other  art  because  it  is  fixed  to  a  spot — on  the  whole  it 
may  be  considered  as  rather  a  piece  of  degradation  that  it 
should  be  portable.  Portable  art — independent  of  all  place 
— is  for  the  most  part  ignoble  art.  Your  little  Dutch  land- 
scape, which  you  jjut  over  yo\iT  sideboard  to-day,  and  be- 
tween the  windows  to-morrow,  is  a  far  more  contemptible 
piece  of  work  than  the  extents  of  field  and  forest  with  which 
Benozzo  has  made  green  and  beautiful  the  once  melancholy 
arcade  of  the  Campo  Santo  at  Pisa ;  and  the  wild  boar  of 
silver  which  you  use  for  a  seal,  or  lock  into  a  velvet  case, 
is  little  likely  to  be  so  noble  a  beast  as  the  bronze  boar  who 
foams  forth  the  fountain  from  under  his  tusks  in  the  mar- 
ket-place of  Florence.  It  is,  indeed,  possible  that  the  por- 
table picture  or  image  may  be  first-rate  of  its  kind,  but  it 
is  not  first-rate  because  it  is  portable;  nor  are  Titian's 
frescoes  less  than  first-rate  because  they  are  fixed ;  nay, 
very  frequently  the  highest  compliment  you  can  pay 
to  a  cabinet  picture  is  to  say — "  It  is  as  grand  as  a 
fresco." 

Kee})ing,  then,  this  fact  fixed  in  our  minds,— that  all  art 
mca/  be  decorative,  and  that  the  greatest  art  yet  produced 


LECT,  111.]  •       AND   DESIGN.  81 

has  been  decorative, — we  may  proceed  to  distinguish   the 
')rders  and  dignities  of  Decorative  art,  thus : — ■ 

I.  The  first  order  of  it  is  that  which  is  meant  for  places 
where  it  cannot  be  disturbed  or  injured,  and  where  it  can 
be  perfectly  seen;  and  then  the  main  parts  of  it  should  be, 
and  have  always  been  made,  by  the  great  masters,  as  perfect, 
and  as  full  of  nature  as  possible. 

You  will  every  day  hear  it  absurdly  said  that  room  de- 
coration should  be  by  flat  patterns — by  dead  colours — -by 
conventional  monotonies,  and  I  know  not  what.  Now,  just 
be  assured  of  this — nobody  ever  yet  used  conventional  art 
to  decorate  with,  when  he  could  do  anything  better,  [uid 
knew  that  what  he  did  would  be  safe.  Nay,  a  great  painter 
will  always  give  you  the  natural  art,  safe  or  not.  Correggio 
gets  a  commission  to  paint  a  room  on  the  ground  floor  of  a 
palace  at  Parma:  Any  of  our  people— bred  on  our  fine 
modern  principles— would  have  covered  it  with  a  diaper, 
or  with  stripes  or  flourishes,  or  mosaic  patterns.  Not  sc 
Correggio : — he  paints  a  thick  trellis  of  vine-leaves,  with 
oval  openings,  ;md  lovely  children  leaping  through  them 
into  the  room;  and  lovely  cliildi't'ii,  depiMid  u])on  it,  aie 
rather  more  desirable  decorations  tlian  diap(!r,  if  you  can 
lo  them — but  they  are  not  ^uite  so  easily  done.  In  like 
manner  Tintoret  has  to  paint  the  whole  end  of  tlie  Council 
Hall  at  Venice.  An  orthodox  decorator  woidd  have  set 
liimself  to  make  the  wall  look  like  a  wall — Tintoret  thinks 
ft  wouM  be  rather  bcttei,    if  he  can  manage  it,  to  make  it 

6 


82  MODERN   MANUFACTURE  [I.ECT.  Ill 

look  a  little  like  Paradise ; — stretches  his  canvas  right  ovei 
the  wall,  and  his  clouds  right  over  his  canvas ;  brings  the 
hght  through  his  clouds — all  blue  and  clear — zodiac  beyond 
zodiac :  rolls  away  the  vaporous  flood  from  under  the  feet 
of  saints,  leaving  them  at  last  in  infinitudes  of  light — un 
orthodox  in  the  last  degi'ce,  but,  on  the  whole,  pleasant. 

And  so  in  all  other  cases  whatever,  the  greatest  decora 
tive  art  is  wholly  unconventional — downright,  pure,  good 
painting  and  sculpture,  but  always  fitted  for  its  place;  and 
subordinated  to  the  purpose  it  has  to  serve  in  that  place, 

II.  But  if  art  is  to  be  placed  where  it  is  liable  to  injury 
— to  wear  and  tear  ;  or  to  alteration  of  its  form  ;  as,  for  in 
stance,  on  domestic  utensils,  and  armour,  anc^  weapons, 
and  dress;  in  which  either  the  ornament  will  be  worn  out 
by  the  usage  of  the  thing,  or  will  be  cast  into  altered  shape 
by  the  play  of  its  folds ;  then  it  is  wrong  to  put  beautiful 
and  perfect  art  to  such  uses,  and  you  want  forms  of  infe- 
rior art,  such  as  will  be  by  their  simplicity  less  liable  to  in- 
jury;  or,  by  reason  of  their  complexity  and  continuousness, 
may  show  to  advantage,  however  distorted  by  the  folds 
they  are  cast  into. 

And  thus  arise  the  various  forms  of  inferior  decoi'ative 
art,  respecting  which  the  general  law  is,  that  the  lower  the 
place  and  office  of  the  thing,  the  less  of  natural  or  perfect 
form  you  should  have  in  it ;  a  zigzag  or  a  chequer  is  thus 
a  better,  be(iause  a  more  consistent  ornament  for  a  cup  oi 
platter  ihan  a  landscape  or  portrait  is:  hence  the  general 


[.ECT.  III.]  AND   DESIGN.  88 

definition  of  the  true  forms  of  conventional  ornament  is, 
that  they  consist  in  the  bestowal  of  as  much  beauty  on  the 
object  as  shall  be  consistent  with  its  Material,  its  Place,  and 
its  Office. 

Let  us  consider  these  three  modes  of  consistency  a  little. 

(a.)  Conventionalism  by  cause  of  inefficiency  of  ma- 
terial. 

If,  for  instance,  we  are  required  to  represent  a  human  fi- 
gure with  stone  only,  we  cannot  represent  its  colour ;  we 
reduce  its  colour  to  whiteness.  That  is  not  elevating  the 
human  body,  but  degrading  it ;  only  it  would  be  a  much 
greater  degradation  to  give  its  colour  falsely.  Diminish  beau- 
ty as  much  as  you  will,  but  do  not  misrepresent  it.  So  again, 
when  we  are  sculpturing  a  face,  we  can't  carve  its  eyelashes. 
The  face  is  none  the  better  for  wanting  its  eyelashes — it  is 
injured  by  the  want;  but  would  be  much  more  injured  by 
a  chimsy  rej)resentation  of  them. 

Neither  can  we  carve  the  hair.  We  must  be  content 
with  the  conventionalism  of  vile  solid  knots  and  lumps  of 
marble,  instead  of  the  golden  cloud  that  encompasses  the 
fair  human  face  with  its  waving  mystery.  The  lumps  of 
marble  are  not  an  elevated  representation  of  hair — they  are 
a  degraded  one ;  yet  better  than  any  attempt  to  imitate 
hair  with  tlie  incajiabla  material. 

In  all  cases  in  which  such  imitation  is  attempted,  instant 
degradation  to  a  still  lower  level  is  the  result.  For  the 
effort  to  imitate  shows   that  llii'  woikmau  has  only  a  bas« 


b4  MODERN   MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Ill 

and  poor  conception  of  the  beauty  of  the  reality — else  he 
would  know  his  task  to  be  hopeless,  and  give  it  up  at  once : 
BO  that  all  endeavours  to  avoid  conventionalism,  when  the 
material  demands  it,  result  from  insensibility  to  truth,  and 
are  among  the  worst  forms  of  vulgarity.  Hence,  in  the 
greatest  Greek  statues,  the  hair  is  very  slightly  indicated — 
not  because  the  sculptor  disdained  hair,  but  because  he 
knew  what  it  was  too  well  to  touch  it  insolently.  I  do  not 
doubt  but  that  the  Greek  painters  drew  hair  exactly  as  Ti- 
tian does.  Modern  attempts  to  produce  finished  pictures 
on  glass  result  from  the  same  base  vulgarism.  No  man 
who  knows  what  painting  means,  can  endure  a  painted 
glass  window  which  emulates  painter's  work.  But  he  re 
joices  in  a"  glowing  mosaic  of  broken  colour :  for  that  is 
what  the  glass  has  the  special  gift  and  right  of  producing.^ 

(r.)  Conventionalism  by  cause  of  inferiority  of  place. 

When  work  is  to  be  seen  at  a  great  distance,  or  in  dark 
places,  or  in  some  other  imperfect  way,  it  constantly  be- 
comes necessary  to  treat  it  coarsely  or  severely,  in  order  to 
make  it  effective.  The  statues  on  cathedral  fronts,  in  good 
times  of  design,  are  variously  treated  according  to  their 
distances  :  no  fine  execution  is  put  into  the  features  of  the 
Madonna  who  rules  the  group  of  figures  above  the  south 
transept  of  Rouen  at  150  feet  above  the  ground:  but  in 
base  modern  work,  as  Milan  Cathedral,  the  sculpture  is 

•  See  Appendix  II.,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'  disappointment. 


LECT.  III.]  AND    DESIGN.  86 

finished  without  any  reference  to  distance ;  and  the  merit 
of  every  statue  is  supposed  to  consist  in  the  visitor's  being 
obliged  to  ascend  three  hundred  steps  before  he  can  see  it. 

(c.)  Conventionalism  by  cause  of  inferiority  of  oflicc. 

When  one  piece  of  ornament  is  to  be  subordinated  te 
another  (as  the  mo\ilding  is  to  the  sculpture  it  encloses,  oi 
the  fringe  of  a  drapery  to  the  statue  it  veils),  this  inferior 
ornament  needs  to  be  degraded  in  order  to  mark  its  lowei 
office ;  and  this  is  best  done  by  refusing,  more  or  less,  the 
introduction  of  natural  form.  The  less  of  nature  it  con 
tains,  the  more  degraded  is  the  ornament,  and  the  fitter  for 
a  humble  place ;  but,  however  far  a  great  workman  may 
go  in  refusing  the  higher  organisms  of  nature,  he  always 
takes  care  to  retain  the  magnificence  of  natural  lines;  that 
is  to  say,  of  the  infinite  curves,  such  as  I  have  analyzed  in 
the  fourth  volume  of  "  Modern  Painters."  His  copyists, 
flmcying  that  they  can  fallow  him  without  nature,  miss 
precisely  the  essence  of  all  the  work  ;  so  that  even  the 
simplest  piece  of  Greek  conventional  ornament  loses  the 
whole  of  its  value  in  any  modern  imitation  of  it,  the  finer 
curves  being  always  missed.  Perhaps  one  of  the  dullest 
and  least  justifiable  mistakes  whi(;h  have  yet  been  made 
about  my  writing,  is  the  sujiposition  that  I  have  attacked  oi 
des])ised  Gnn^k  work.  I  have  attacked  Palladian  work, 
and  modern  imitation  of  Greek  work.  Of  Greek  work 
itself  I  liave  never  spoken  but  with  a  reverence  quite 
infinite;:  T  name;  Phidias  always  in  exactly  the  same  tone 


8tf  MODERN    MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Ill 

with  which  I  speak  of  Michael  Angelo,  Titian,  and  Dante, 
My  first  statement  of  this  faith,  now  thirteen  years  ago, 
was  surely  clear  enough.  "  We  shall  see  by  this  light 
three  colossal  images  standing  up  side  by  side,  looming  in 
their  great  rest  of  spirituality  above  the  whole  world  hori- 
zon. Phidias,  Michael  Angelo,  and  Dante, — from  these  we 
may  go  down  step  by  step  among  the  mighty  men  of 
every  age,  securely  and.  certainly  observant  of  diminished 
lustre  in  every  appearance  of  restlessness  and  eifort,  until 
the  last  trace  of  inspiration  vanishes  in  the  tottering  affec- 
tation or  tortured  insanities  of  modern  times."  (Modern 
Painters,  vol.  ii.,  p.  63.)  This  was  surely  plain  speaking 
enougli,  and  from  that  day  to  this  my  effort  has  .been  not 
fess  continually  to  make  the  heart  of  Greek  work  known 
than  the  heart  of  Gothic :  namely,  the  nobleness  of  con- 
ception of  form  derived  from  perpetual  study  of  the  figure  ; 
and  my  complaint  of  the  modern  architect  has  been  not 
that  he  followed  the  Greeks,  but  that  he  denied  the  first 
laws  of  life  in  theirs  as  in  all  other  art. 

The  fact  is,  that  all  good  subordinate  forms  of  ornamen- 
tation ever  yet  existent  in  the  world  have  been  invented, 
and  others  as  beautiful  can  only  be  invented,  by  men  pri- 
marily exercised  in  drawing  or  carving  the  human  figure. 
1  will  not  repeat  here  what  I  have  already  twice  insisted 
upon,  to  the  students  of  London  and  Manchester,  respect 
mg  the  degradation  of  temper  and  intellect  which  follows 
the  pursuit    of  art  without  reference   to   natural   form,  as 


LKCT.  Ill.j  AND    DESIGN.  87 

among  the  Asiatics :  here,  I  will  only  trespass  on  youi 
patience  so  far  as  to  mark  the  inseparable  connection 
between  figure-drawing  and  good  ornamental  work,  in  the 
great  European  schools,  and  all  that  are  connected  with 
them. 

Tell  me,  then,  first  of  all,  what  ornamental  work  is 
usually  put  before  our  students  as  the  type  of  decorative 
perfection  ?  RaphacFs  arabesques  ;  are  they  not  ?  Well, 
Raphael  knew  a  little  about  the  figure,  I  suppose,  before  he 
drew  them.  T  do  not  say  that  I  like  those  arabesques  ;  bul 
there  are  certain  qualities  in  them  which  are  inimitable  by 
modern  designers  ;  and  those  qualities  are  just  the  fruit  of 
the  master's  figure  study.  What  is  given  the  student  as 
next  to  Ra})hael's  work?  Cinquecento  ornament  gene- 
rally. Well,  cinquecento  generally,  with  its  birds,  and 
cherubs,  and  wreathed  foliage,  and  clustered  fruit,  was  the 
amusement  of  men  who  habitually  and  easily  carved  the 
figure,  or  painted  it.  All  the  truly  fine  specimens  of  it 
have  figures  or  animals  as  main  parts  of  the  design. 

'•  Nay,  but,"  some  anciently  or  mediajvally  minded  person 
will  exclaim,  "  we  don't  want  to  study  cinquecento.  Wo 
want  severer,  purer  conventionalism,"  What  will  you  have  ? 
Egyptian  ornament?  Why,  the  whole  mass  of  it  is  made 
11)1  of  multitudinous  human  figures  in  every  kind  of  action 
—and  magnificent  action ;  their  kings  drawing  their  bowa 
in  their  chariols,  their  sheaves  of  arrows  rattling  at  theii 
shoulders;  the  slain    falling  under  llicm  :is  l)efore  a   jiesti 


88  MODERN    MANUFACTURE  [LECT.   IM 

leuce;  theii  captors  driven  before  them  in  astonied  troops; 
and  do  j^ou  expect  to  imitate  Egyptian  ornament  without 
knowing  how  to  draw  the  human  figure?  Nay,  but  you 
w\\\  take  Christian  ornament — purest  medi£ev.J  Cbristiau 
—thirteenth  century  !  Yes  :  and  do  you  suppose  you  will 
find  the  Christian  less  human  ?  The  least  natural  and  most 
purely  conventional  ornament  of  the  Gothic  schools  is  that 
of  their  painted  glass ;  and  do  you  suppose  painted  glass, 
in  the  fine  times,  was  ever  wrought  without  figures  ?  We 
have  got  into  the  way,  among  our  other  modern  wretcheil 
ncsses,  of  trying  to  make  windows  of  leaf  diapers,  and  of 
strips  of  twisted  red  and  yellow  bands,  looking  like  the  pai 
terns  of  currant  jelly  on  the  top  of  Christmas  cakes ;  but 
every  casement  of  old  glass  contained  a  saint's  history. 
The  windows  of  Bourges,  Chartres,  or  Rouen  have  ten, 
fifteen,  or  twenty  medalliong  in  each,  and  each  medallion 
contains  two  figures  at  least,  often  six  or  seven,  represent- 
ing every  event  of  interest  in  the  history  of  the  saint  whose 
life  is  in  question.  Nay,  but,  you  say  those  figures  are  rude 
and  quaint,  and  ought  not  to  be  imitated.  Why,  so  is  the 
leafage  rude  and  quaint,  yet  you  imitate  that.  The  co- 
loured border  pattern  of  geranium  or  ivy  leaf  is  not  one 
whit  better  drawn,  or  more  like  geraniums  and  ivy,  than  the 
figures  are  like  figures ;  but  you  call  the  geranium  leaf  ide- 
alized— why  don't  you  call  the  figures  so  ?  The  fact  ia 
neither  are  idealized,  but  both  are  conventionalized  on  the 
same  principles,  and  in  tlie  same  way  ;  and  if  \^ou  want  tc 


LECl.  III.]  AND    DESIGN.  89 

learn  how  to  treat  the  leafage,  the  only  way  is  to  learn  lirsi 
how  to  treat  the  figure.  And  you  may  soon  test  your 
powers  in  this  respect.  Those  old  workmen  were  not  afraid 
of  the  most  familiar  subjects.  The  windows  of  Chartres 
were  presented  by  the  trades  of  the  town,  and  at  the  bot- 
tom of  each  window  is  a  representation  of  the  proceedings 
of  the  tradesmen  at  the  business  which  enabled  them  to  pay 
for  the  window.  There  are  smiths  at  the  forge,  curriers  at 
their  hides,  tanners  looking  into  their  pits,  mercers  selling 
goods  over  the  counter— all  made  into  beautiful  medallions. 
Therefore,  whenever  you  want  to  know  whether  you  have 
got  any  real  power  of  composition  or  adaptation  in  orna- 
ment, don't  be  content  with  sticking  leaves  together  by  the 
ends, — anybody  can  do  that ;  but  try  to  conventionalize  a 
butcher's  or  a  greengrocer's,  with  Saturday  night  customers 
buying  cabbage  and  beef.  That  will  tell  you  if  you  can 
design  or  not. 

I  can  fancy  your  losing  patience  with  me  altogether  just 
now.  "  We  asked  this  fellow  down  to  tell  our  workmen 
how  to  make  shawls,  and  he  is  only  trying  to  teach  them 
how  to  caricature."  But  have  a  little  patience  with  me,  and 
examine,  after  I  have  done,  a  little  for  yourselves  into  the 
history  of  ornamental  art,  and  you  will  discover  why  I  do 
this.  You  will  discover,  I  repeat,  that  all  great  ornamental 
art  whatever  is  founded  on  the  effort  of  the  workman  to 
draw  the  figure,  and,  in  the  best  schools,  to  draw  all  thai 
he  saw  about  liim  in  living  nature.     The  best  art  of  pot 


90  MODERN    MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Ill 

tory  is  acknowledged  to  be  that  of  Greece,  and  all  tha 
power  of  design  exhibited  in  it,  down  to  the  merest  zigzag, 
arises  primarily  from  the  workman  having  been  forced  to 
outline  nymphs  and  knights ;  from  those  helmed  and 
draped  figures  he  holds  his  power.  Of  Egyptian  ornament 
I  have  just  spoken.  You  have  everything  given  there 
that  the  workman  saw ;  people  of  his  nation  employed  in 
hunting,  fighting,  fishing,  visiting,  making  love,  building, 
cooking — everything  they  did  is  drawn,  magnificently  or 
familiarly,  as  was  needed.  In  Byzantine  ornament,  saints, 
or  animals  which  are  types  of  various  s})i ritual  power,  are 
the  main  subjects  ;  and  from  the  church  down  to  the  piece 
of  enamelled  metal,  figure, — figure, — figure,  always  princi- 
pal. In  Norman  and  Gothic  work  you  have,  with  all  their 
quiet  saints,  also  other  much  disquieted  persons,  hunting, 
feasting,  fighting,  and  so  on  ;  or  whole  hordes  of  animals 
racing  after  each  other.  In  the  Bayeux  tapestry,  Queen 
Matilda  gave,  as  well  as  she  could, — in  many  respects 
graphically  enough, — the  whole  history  of  the  conquest  of 
England.  Thence,  as  you  increase  in  power  of  art,  you 
have  more  and  more  finished  figures,  up  to  the  solemn 
sculptures  of  Wells  Cathedral,  or  the  cherubic  enrichments 
of  the  Venetian  Madonna  dei  Miracoli.  Therefore,  I  will 
tell  you  fearlessly,  for  I  know  it  is  true,  you  must  raise 
your  workman  up  to  life,  or  you  will  never  get  from  him 
one  line  of  well-imagined  conventionalism.  We  have  at 
present  no  good  ornamental  design.     We  can't  have  it  yet, 


LECT.  III.]  ANJ)    DESIGN.  91 

and  wc  must  be  patient  if  we  want  to  have  it.  Do  not 
hope  to  feci  the  effect  of  your  schools  at  once,  but  raise  the 
men  as  high  as  you  can,  and  then  let  them  stoop  as  low  i\a 
you  need ;  no  great  man  ever  minds  stooping.  Encourage 
the  students,  in  sketching  accurately  and  continually  from 
nature  anything  that  comes  in  their  way — still  life,  flowers 
animals  ;  but,  above  all,  figures  ;  and  so  far  as  you  allow 
of  any  difference  between  an  artist's  training  and  theirs,  let 
it  be,  not  m  what  they  draw,  but  in  the  degree  of  conven 
tionalism  you  require  in  the  sketch. 

For  my  own  ]:>art,  I  should  always  endeavour  to  give 
thorough  artistical  training  first;  but  I  am  not  certain 
(the  experiment  being  yet  untried)  what  results  may 
be  obtained  by  a  truly  intelligent  practice  of  conventional 
drawing,  such  as  that  of  the  Egyptians,  Greeks,  or  thir- 
teenth century  French,  which  consists  in  the  utmost  pos- 
sible rendering  of  natural  form  by  the  fewest  possible 
lines.  The  animal  and  bird  drawing  of  the  Egyptians 
is,  in  their  fine  age,  quite  magnificent  under  its  cor. 
ditions ;  magnificent  in  two  ways — first,  in  keenest  percep- 
tion of  the  main  forms  and  facts  in  the  creature;  and, 
secondly,  in  the  grandeur  of  line  by  which  their  forms  are 
abstracted  and  insisted  on.  making  every  asp,  ibis,  and 
vulture  a  sublime  s])ectre  of  asp  oi-  ibis  or  vulture  powei' 
l^he  way  for  students  to  get  some  of  this  gift  again  {some 
only,  for  I  believe  the  fulness  of  the  gift  itself  to  be 
connected   with   vital   superstition,  and   with    resulting  in 


92  AIODKIIN    MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Hi 

tensity  of  reverence  ;  people  were  likely  to  know  somfr 
thing  about  hawks  and  ibises,  when  to  kill  one  was  to 
be  irrevocably  judged  to  death)  is  never  to  pass  a  day 
without  drawinof  some  animal  from  the  life,  allowina:  them- 
selves  the  fewest  possible  lines  and  colours  to  do  it 
with,  but  resolving  that  whatever  is  characteristic  of  tho 
animal  shall  in  some  way  or  other  be  shown.*  I  repeat,  it 
cannot  jet  be  judged  what  results  might  be  obtained  by 
a  nobly  practised  conventionalism  of  this  kind ;  but, 
however  that  may  be,  the  first  fact, — the  necessity  of 
animal  and  figure  drawing,  is  absolutely  certain,  and  no 
person  who  shrinks  from  it  will  ever  become  a  great 
designer. 

One  great  good  arises  even  from  the  first  step  in  figure 
di'awing,  that  it  gets  the  student  quit  at  once  of  the  notion 
of  formal  symmetry.  If  you  learn  only  to  draw  a  leaf 
well,  you  are  taught  in  some  of  our  schools  to  turn  it  the 
other  way,  opposite  to  itself ;  and  the  two  leaves  set  oppo- 
site ways  are  called  "  a  design : "  and  thus  it  is  supposed 
possible  to  produce  ornamentation,  though  you  have  no 
nioi'e  brains  than  a  looking-glass  or  a  kaleidoscope  has. 
But  if  you  once  learn  to  draw  the  human  figure,  you  will 
find  that  knocking  two  men's  heads  together  does  not 
necessarily  constitute  a  good  design;  nay,  that  it  makes  a 
very  bad  design,  or  no  design  at  all ;  and  you  will  see  at 

*  Plate  75  in  Vol.  V.  of  Wilkinson's  "  Ancient  Egypt "  will  give  th« 
student  an  idea  of  how  to  set  to  work. 


I.ECT.  III.J  AND   Dr<;siGM.  93 

once  that  to  arrange  a  group  of  two  or  more  figures,  jou 
must,  though  perha|)s  it  may  bo  desirable  to  balance,  oi 
oppose  them,  at  the  same  time  vary  their  attitudes,  an 
Diake  one,  not  the  reverse  of  the  other,  but  the  companiou 
of  the  other. 

T  had  a  somewhat  amusing  discussion  on  this  subject  with 
a  friend,  only  the  other  dny  ;  and  one  of  his  retorts  upon 
me  was  so  neatly  put,  and  ex])resses  so  completely  all  that 
san  eitner  be  said  or  shown  on  the  opposite  side,  that  it  is 
well  worth  while  giving  it  you  exactlj^  in  the  form  it  was 
sent  to  me..  My  fi'iend  had  been  maintaining  that  the 
essence  of  ornament  con.sisted  in  three  things: — contrast, 
series,  and  symmetry.  I  replied  (by  letter)  that  "  none  of 
them,  nor  all  of  them  together,  would  produce  ornament 
Here  " — (making  a  I'agged  blot  with  the  back 
of  my  pen  on  the  paper) — "you  have  contrast; 
but  it  \sn't  ornament:  here,  1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6," — (writing  the 
numeials) — "you  have  series  ;  but  it 
isn't  ornament:  and  hero,"— (sketch-  Y^ 

ing   this   figure   at  the  side) — "you 
have  symmetry  ;  but   it   isn't  orna-  ^ 

ment."  ^        2^ 

My  friend  replied : — 

"  your  materials  were  not  ornament,  because  you  did 
not  apply  them.  I  send  them  to  you  back,  made  uj; 
into  a  choice  sporting  neckerchief: — 


^ — \ — « 


94 


MODERN    MAN U PICTURE 


[LECT.  IJi 


Symmetrical  figure Unit  of  diaper. 

Contrast Corner  ornaments. 

Series Border  ornaments. 

Each  figure  is  converted  into  a  harmony  by  being  revolv- 
ad  on  its  two  axes,  the  whole  opposed  in  contrasting  scries." 

My  answer  was — or  rather  was  to  the  effect  (for  I  must 
expand  it  a  little,  here) — that  his  words,  "  because  you  did 
not  apply  them,"  contained  the  gist  of  tlie  whole  matter ; — 
that  the  application  of  them,  or  any  other  things,  was  pre- 
cisely the  essence  of  design  ; — the  non-application,  or  wrong 
apj)Iication,   the  negation  of  design :    that  his  use  of  the 


LEOT.  III.J  AND    DESIGN.  95 

poor  materials  was  in  this  case  admirable;  and  that  if  In: 
could  explain  to  me,  in  clear  words,  the  principles  on 
which  he  had  so  used  them,  Tie  would  be  doing  a  very 
great  service  to  all  students  of  art. 

"  Tell  me,  therefore  (I  asked),  these  main  points : 

"  1.  How  did  you  determine  the  number  of  figures  you 
would  put  into  the  neckerchief  ?  Had  there  been  more, 
it  would  have  been  mean  and  ineffective, — a  pepper- 
and-salt  sprinkling  of  figures.  Had  there  been  fewer, 
it  would  have  been  monstrous.  How  did  you  fix  the 
number  ? 

"  2.  How  did  you  determine  the  breadth  of  the  border 
and  relative  size  of  the  numerals  ? 

"3.  Why  are  there  two  lines  outside  of  the  border,  and 
one  only  inside?  Why  are  there  no  more  lines?  Why 
not  three  and  two,  or  three  and  five?  Why  lines  at  all  to 
sc})arate  the  barbarous  figures;  and  why,  if  lines  at  all, 
not  double  or  treble  instead  of  single  ? 

*'  4.  Why  did  you  put  the  double  blots  at  the  corners  ? 
Why  not  at  the  angles  of  the  chequers, — or  in  the  middle 
of  the  border? 

"  It  is  precisely  your  knowing  why  not  to  do  these 
•Jiings,  and  why  to  do  just  what  you  have  done,  which  con 
stituted  your  power  of  design ;  and  like  all  the  people  I 
have  ever  known  who  had  that  power,  you  are  entirely  un- 
conscious of  the  essential  laws  by  which  3a  u  work,  an  I 
confuse  other  ])coplc  by  telling  them  that  the  design  depend? 


96  MODERN    MANUFACTURE  [LECI    111 

i>u  symmetry  and  series,  wlien,  in  fact,  it  depends  entirely 
on  your  own  sense  and  judgment." 

This  was  the  substance  of  my  last  answer — to  which  (as 
I  knew  beforehand  would  be  the  case)  I  got  no  reply ;  but 
it  still  remains  to  be  observed  that  with  all  the  skill  and  taste 
(especially  involving  the  architect's  great  trust,  harmony  of 
})roportion),  which  my  friend  could  bring  to  bear  on  the 
materials  given  him,  the  result  is  still  only — a  sportin^i 
neckerchief— that  is  to  say,  the  materials  addressed,  first,  to 
recklessness,  in  the  shape  of  a  mere  blot ;  then  to  computa- 
tivcness,  in  a  series  of  figures;  and  then  to  absurdity  and 
ignorance,  in  the  shape  of  an  ill-drawn  caricature — such  ma- 
terials, however  treated,  can  only  work  up  into  what  will 
})leasc  reckless,  computative,  and  vulgar  persons, — that  is  to 
say,  into  a  sporting  neckerchief  The  difference  between 
this  piece  of  ornamentation  and  Correggio's  painting  at  Par- 
ma lies  simply  and  wholly  in  the  additions  (somewhat  large 
ones),  of  truth  and  of  tenderness :  in  the  drawing  being 
lovely  as  well  as  symmetrical — and  representative  of  reali- 
ties as  well  as  agreeably  disposed.  And  truth,  tenderness, 
and  inventive  application  or  disposition  are  indeed  the  roota 
of  ornament — -not  contrast,  nor  symmetry. 

It  ought  yet  farther  to  be  observed,  that  the  nobler  the 
materials^  the  less  their  symvfietry  is  endarable.  In  the  pre- 
sent case,  the  sense  of  fitness  and  order,  produced  by  the 
repetition  c  f  the  figures,  neutralizes,  in  some  degree,  theii 
reckless  vulgarity ;  and  is  wholly,  therefore,  beneficent   to 


LECr.  III.]  AND   DESIGN.  97 

tbem.  But  draw  the  figures  better,  and  their  repetition  will 
become  painful.  You  may  harmlessly  balance  a  mere  geo 
metrical  form,  and  oppose  one  quatrefoil  or  cusp  by  an- 
other exactly  like  it.  But  put  two  Apollo  Belvideres  back- 
to  back,  and  you  will  not  think  the  symmetry  improves 
them.  Whenever  Oie  materials  of  ornament  are  noble,  they 
must  he  various  ;  and  repetition  of  parts  is  either  the  sign  of 
utterly  bad,  hopeless,  and  base  work ;  or  of  the  intended 
degradation  of  the  parts  in  which  such  repetition  is  allowed, 
la  order  to  foil  others  more  noble. 

Such,  then,  are  a  few  of  the  great  principles,  by  the  en- 
forcement of  which  you  may  hope  to  promote  the  success 
of  the  modern  student  of  design  ;  but  remember,  none  of 
these  principles  will  be  useful  at  all,  unless  you  understand 
them  to  be,  in  one  profound  and  stern  sense,  useless.* 

That  is  to  say,  unless  you  feel  that  neither  you  nor  I,  noi 
any  one,  can,  in  the  great  ultimate  sense,  teach  anybody 
how  to  make  a  good  design. 

If  designing  could  be  taught,  all  the  world  would  learn  : 
as  all  the  world  reads — or  calculates.  But  dcsignmg  is  not 
to  be  spelled",  nor  summed.  My  men  continually  come  to 
me,  in  my  drawing  class  in  London,  thinking  I  am  to  teach 
tliem  what  is  instantly  to  enable  them  to  gain  their  bread. 
"  Please,  sir,  show  us  how  to  design."     "  Make  designers 

*  I  shall  endeavour  for  the  future  to  put  my  self-contradictions  in 
short  sentences  and  direct  terms,  in  order  to  save  sagacious  persons 
the  trouble  of  looking  for  them. 


98  MODERN   MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Ill 

of  US."  And  you,  I  doubt  not,  partly  expect  me  to  tell 
you  to-niglit  how  to  make  designers  of  your  Bradford 
youths.  Alas  I  I  could  as  soon  tell  you  how  to  make  or 
manufacture  an  ear  of  wheat,  as  to  make  a  good  artist  of 
any  kind.  I  can  analyze  the  wheat  very  learnedly  for  yon 
■ — tell  yon  there  is  starch  in  it,  and  carbon,  and  silex.  I  can 
give  you  starch,  and  charcoal,  and  flint ;  but  you  are  as  far 
from  your  ear  of  wheat  as  you  were  before.  All  that  can 
[)Ossibly  be  done  for  any  one  who  wants  ears  of  wheat  is  to 
show  them  where  to  find  grains  of  wheat,  and  how  to  sow 
them,  and  then,  with  patience,  in  Heaven's  time,  the  ears 
will  come— or  will  perhaps  come — ground  and  weather  per- 
mitting. So  in  this  matter  of  making  artists — first  you  must 
find  your  artist  in  the  grain;  then  you  must  plant  him; 
fence  and  weed  the  field  about  him  ;  and  with  patience, 
ground  and  weather  permitting,  you  may  get  an  artist  out 
of  him — not  otherwise.  And  what  I  have  to  speak  to  you 
about,  to-night,  is  mainly  the  ground  and  the  weather,  it 
being  the  first  and  quite  most  material  question  in  this  mat- 
ter, whether  the  ground  and  weather  of  Bradford,  or  the 
gi^ound  and  weather  of  England  in  general, — suit  wheat. 

And  observe  in  the  outset,  it  is  not  so  much  what  the 
present  circumstances  of  England  are,  as  what  we  wish  to 
make  them,  that  we  have  to  consider.  If  you  will  tell  mo 
what  you  ultimately  intend  Bradford  to  be,  perhaps  I  can 
tell  you  what  Bradford  can  ultimately  produce.  But  you 
muHi  have  your  minds  clearly  made  up,  and  be  distinct  in 


LECT.  III.]  AND   DESIGN.  99 

telling  me  what  you  do  want.  At  present  I  don't  know 
what  you  are  aiming  at,  and  possibly  on  consideration  you 
may  feel  some  doubt  whether  you  know  yourselves.  A= 
matters  stand,  all  over  England,  as  soon  as  one  mill  is  at 
work,  occupying  two  hundred  hands,  we  try,  by  means  of 
it,  to  set  another  mill  at  work,  occupying  four  hundred. 
That  is  aU  simple  and  comprehensive  enough — but  what  is 
it  to  come  to  ?  How  many  mills  do  we  want  ?  or  do  we 
indeed  want  no  end  of  mills  ?  Let  us  entirely  understand 
each  other  on  this  point  before  we  go  any  farther.  Last 
week,  1  drove  from  Rochdale  to  Bolton  Abbey  ;  quietly, 
in  order  to  see  the  country,  and  certainly  it  was  well  worth 
while.  I  never  went  over  a  more  interesting  twenty  miles 
than  those  between  Rochdale  and  Burnley.  Naturally,  the 
valley  has  been  one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  the  Lancashire 
liills ;  one  of  the  far  away  solitudes,  full  of  old  shepherd 
ways  of  life.  At  this  time  there  are  not, — I  speak  delibe- 
rately, and  I  believe  quite  literally, — there  are  not,  I  think, 
more  than  a  thousand  yards  of  road  to  be  traversed  any- 
where, without  passing  a  furnace  or  mill. 

Now,  is  that  the  kind  of  thing  you  want  to  come  to 
everywhere  ?  Because,  if  it  be,  and  you  tell  me  so  dis- 
tinctly, I  think  I  can  make  several  suggestions  to-night, 
and  could  make  more  if  you  give  me  time,  which  would 
materially  advance  your  object.  The  extent  of  our  opera 
tions  at  pn^scnt  is  more  or  less  limitc^d  by  the  extimtof  coai 
and  ironstone,  but  \vv.  have  not  yet  learned  to  nuike  propel 


too  MODERN   MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Ill 

use  of  our  clay  Over  the  greater  part  of  England,  south 
of  the  manufacturing  districts,  there  are  magLificent  beds  of 
various  kinds  of  useful  clay ;  and  I  believe  that  it  would 
not  be  difficult  to  point  out  modes  of  employing  it  which 
»night  enable  us  to  turn  nearly  the  whole  of  the  south  of 
England  into  a  brickfield,  as  we  have  already  turned  nearly 
the  whole  of  the  north  into  a  coal-pit.  I  say  "nearly"  the 
whole,  because,  as  you  are  doubtless  aware,  there  are  con- 
siderable districts  in  the  south  composed  of  chalk,  renowned 
up  to  the  present  time  for  their  downs  and  mutton.  But,  1 
think,  by  examining  carefully  into  the  conceivable  uses  of 
chalk,  we  might  discover  a  quite  feasible  probability  of 
turning  all  the  chalk  districts  into  a  limekiln,  as  we  turu 
the  clay  districts  into  a  brickfield.  There  would  then 
remain  nothing  but  the  mountain  districts  to  be  dealt  with  ; 
"out,  as  we  have  not  yet  ascertained  all  the  uses  of  clay  and 
chalk,  still  less  have  we  ascertained  those  of  stone ;  and  I 
think,  by  draining  the  useless  inlets  of  the  Cumberland, 
Welsh,  and  Scotch  lakes,  and  turning  them,  with  their 
rivers,  into  navigable  reservoirs  and  canals,  there  would  be 
no  difficulty  in  working  the  whole  of  our  mountain  dis- 
tricts as  a  gigantic  quarry  of  slate  and  granite,  from  which 
all  the  rest  of  the  world  might  be  supplied  with  roofing  and 
building  stone. 

Is  this,  then,  what  you  want  ?  You  are  going  straight 
at  it  at  present ;  and  I  have  only  to  ask  under  what  limi- 
tations  I   am  to  conceive  or  describe   your  final  success  r 


LECJT.  Ill  I  AND   DESIGN.  101 

Or  shall  there  be  no  limitations  ?  There  are  none  to  joui 
powers ;  every  day  puts  new  machinery  at  your  disposal, 
and  increases,  with  your  capital,  the  vastness  of  youi 
undertakings.  The  changes  in  the  state  of  this  country 
arc  now  so  rapid,  that  it  would  be  wholly  absurd  to  endea- 
vour to  lay  down  laws  of  art  education  for  it  under  its 
present  aspect  and  circumstances ;  and  tlierefore  I  must 
necessarily  ask,  how  much  of  it  do  you  seriously  intend 
within  the  next  fifty  years  to  be  coal-pit,  brickfield,  or 
quarry  ?  For  the  sake  of  distinctness  of  conclusion,  I  will 
suppose  your  success  absolute:  that  from  shore  to  shore 
the  whole  of  the  island  is  to  be  set  as  thick  with  chiiuneys 
as  the  masts  stand  in  the  docks  of  Liverpool  :  that  there 
shall  be  no  meadows  in  it ;  no  trees;  no  gardens;  only  a 
little  corn  grown  upon  the  housetops,  reaped  and  threshed 
by  steam :  that  you  do  not  leave  even  room  for  roads,  but 
travel  either  over  the  roofs  of  your  mills,  on  viaducts ;  or 
under  their  floors,  in  tunnels :  that,  the  smoke  having  ren- 
dered the  light  of  the  sun  unserviceable,  you  work  always 
by  the  light  of  your  own  gas:  that  no  acre  of  English 
ground  shall  be  without  its  shaft  and  its  engine ;  and  there- 
fore, no  spot  of  English  ground  left,  on  which  it  shall  be 
possible  to  stand,  without  a  definite  and  calculable  chance 
of  being  blown  off"  it,  at  any  moment,  into  small  pieces. 

Under  these  circuuistances,  (if  this  is  to  be  the  future  of 
England,)  no  designing  or  any  other  development  of 
beautiful   art  will   be  possible     Do  not  vex   your  minds, 


102  MODERN   MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Ill 

aor  waste  yuur  money  with  any  thought  or  effort  in  the 
matter.  Beautiful  art  can  only  be  produced  by  people  who 
have  beautiful  things  about  them,  and  leisure  to  look  at 
them  ;  and  unless  you  provide  some  elements  of  beauty  for 
your  workmen  to  be  surrounded  by,  you  will  find  that  no 
elements  of  beauty  can  be  invented  by  them. 

I  was  struck  forcibly  by  the  bearing  of  this  great  fact 
upon  our  modern  efforts  at  ornamentation  in  an  afternoon 
walk,  last  week,  in  the  suburbs  of  one  of  our  large  manu- 
facturing towns.  I  was  thinking  of  the  difference  in  the 
effect  upon  the  designer's  mind,  between  the  scene  which 
I  then  came  upon,  and  the  scene  which  would  have 
presented  itself  to  the  eyes  of  any  designer  of  the  middle 
ages,  when  he  left  his  workshop.  Just  outside  the  town 
I  came  upon  an  old  English  cottage,  or  mansion,  I 
hardly  know  which  to  call  it,  set  close  under  the  hill,  and 
beside  tlie  river,  perhaps  built  somewhere  in  tlie  Charles's 
times,  with  muUioned  windows  and  a  low  arched  porcli  \ 
round  which,  in  the  little  triangular  garden,  one  can  ima- 
gine the  family  as  they  used  to  sit  in  old  summer  times, 
the  ripple  of  the  river  heard  faintly  through  the  sweetbriar 
hedge,  and  the  sheep  on  the  far-off  wolds  shining  in  tlie 
evening  sunlig.it.  There,  uninhabited  for  many  and  many 
a  year,  it  had  been  left  in  unregarded  havoc  of  ruin  •, 
the  garden-gate  still  swung  loose  to  its  latch;  the  garden, 
blighted  utterly  into  a  field  of  ashes,  not  even  a  weed 
taking  root  there  ;  tlie  roof  torn   into  si i ageless  rents  ;  the 


I,ECT.  III.]  AND   DESIGN.  1{'8 

ehutters  hanging  about  the  windows  in  rags  of  rotten 
wood;  before  its  gate,  the  stream  which  had  gladdened  it 
Qow  soaking  slowly  by,  black  as  ebony,  and  thick  with 
i^urdling  scum  ;  the  bank  above  it  trodden  into  unctuous, 
sooty  slime:  far  in  front  of  it,  between  it  and  the  old  hills, 
the  furnaces  of  the  city  foaming  forth  pei'petual  plague  of 
sulphurous  darkness ;  the  volumes  of  their  storm  clouds 
coiling  low  over  a  waste  of  grasslcss  fields,  fenced  from 
each  other,  not  by  hedges,  but  by  slabs  of  square  stone, 
like  gravestones,  riveted  together  with  iron. 

That  was  your  scene  for  the  designer's  contemplation  in  his 
afternoon  walk  at  Rochdale.  Now  fancy  what  was  the  scene 
which  presented  itself,  in  his  afternoon  walk,  to  a  designer  of 
the  Gothic  school  of  Pisa — Nino  Pisano,  or  any  of  his  men. 

On  each  side  of  a  bright  river  he  saw  rise  a  line  of 
brighter  palaces,  arched  and  pillared,  and  inlaid  with  dec}' 
red  porphyry,  and  with  serpentine  ;  along  the  quays  be- 
foi'e  their  gates  were  riding  troops  of  knights,  noble  in  face 
and  form,  dazzling  in  crest  and  shield ;  horse  and  man  one 
hdjyrinth  of  quaint  colour  and  gleaming  light — the  purple, 
and  silver,  and  scarlet  fringes  flowing  over  the  strong  limbs 
and  clashing  iiuiil,  like  sea-waves  over  rocks  at  sunset. 
0})ening  on  each  side  fiom  the  river  were  gardens,  courts, 
und  cloisters ;  long  successions  of  white  pillars  among 
jvreaths  of  vine ;  leaping  of  fountains  through  buds  of 
pomegranate  and  orange :  and  still  along  the  garden-})atha, 
ani]  undi'r  :iiiil    throiigli    tlie  ciinison   of  the  ))omegi'anntf 


104  AIUDERN    MANUFACTL'RE  [LECI.  Ill 

shadows,  moving  slowly,  groups  of  the  fairest  women  thai 
Italy  ever  saw— fairest,  because  purest  and  thoughtfullest ; 
trained  in  all  high  knowledge,  as  in  all  courteous  art — in 
dance,  in  song,  in  sweet  wit,  in  lofty  learning,  in  loftier 
courage,  in  loftiest  love — ^able  alike  to  cheer,  to  enchant,  or 
save,  the  souls  of  men.  Above  all  this  scenery  of  perfect 
human  life,  rose  dome  and  bell-tower,  burning  with  white 
alabaster  and  gold  ;  beyond  dome  and  bell-tower  the  slopes 
of  mighty  hills,  hoary  with  olive ;  far  in  the  north,  above 
a  purple  sea  of  peaks  of  solemn  Apennine,  the  clear,  sharp- 
cloven  Carrara  mountains  sent  up  their  steadfast  flames  of 
marble  summit  into  amber  sky  ;  the  great  sea  itself,  scorch- 
ing with  expanse  of  light,  stretching  from  their  feet  to  the 
Gorgonian  isles ;  and  over  all  these,  ever  present,  near  or 
far — seen  through  the  leaves  of  vine,  or  imaged  with  all 
its  inarch  of  clouds  in  the  Arno's  stream,  or  set  with  its 
depth  of  blue  close  against  the  golden  hair  and  burning 
cheek  of  lady  and  knight, — that  untroubled  and  sacred 
sky,  whicli  was  to  all  men,  in  those  days  of  innocent  foith. 
indeed  the  unquesti(jned  abode  of  spirits,  as  the  earth  waa 
of  men ;  and  which  opened  straight  through  its  gates  of 
cloud  and  veils  of  dew  into  the  awfulness  of  the  eternal 
world  ;^a  heaven  in  which  every  cloud  that  passed  waa 
literally  the  chariot  of  an  angel,  and  every  ray  of  its.Evo 
riing  and  Morning  streamed  from  the  throne  of  God. 

What  tliink  you  of  that  for  a  S(;hool  of  design  ? 

I  do  not  bring  this  contrast  before  you  as  a  giound  oi 


l.KGT.  I II. J  AND   DESIGN.  105 

liopelcssness  in  our  task  ;  neither  do  I  look  for  any  possible 
renovation  of  the  Republic  of  Pisa,  at  Bradford,  in  the 
nineteenth  century  ;  but  I  put  it  before  you  in  ordej'  tliat 
you  may  be  aware  precisely  of  the  kind  of  difficulty  you 
liave  to  meet,  and  may  then  consider  with  yourselves  h(jw 
far  you  can  meet  it.  To  men  surrounded  by  the  depressing 
and  monotonous  circumstances  of  English  manufacturing 
life,  depend  upon  it,  design  is  simply  impossible.  This  is 
the  most  distinct  of  all  the  experiences  I  have  had  in  deal- 
ing with  the  modern  workman.  He  is  intelligent  and 
ingenious  in  the  highest  degree — subtle  in  touch  and  keen 
in  sight:  but  he  is,  generally  speaking,  wholly  destitute  of 
designing  power.  And  if  you  want  to  give  him  the  power, 
you  must  give  him  the  materials,  and  put  him  in  the  cir- 
cumstances for  it.  Design  is  not  the  offspring  of  idle 
fiincy  :  it  is  the  studied  result  of  accunmlative  observation 
and  delightful  habit.  Without  observation  and  experience, 
no  design — witliout  peace  and  pleasurablcness  in  occupa- 
tion, no  design — and  all  the  lecturings,  and  teachings,  and 
prizes,  and  principles  of  art,  in  tlie  world,  are  of  no  use,  so 
l(jng  as  you  don't  sun-ound  your  men  with  happy  influences 
and  beautiful  things.  It  is  impossible  for  them  to  have 
/ight  ideas  about  colour,  unless  they  see  the  lovely  colours 
of  nature  unspoiled ;  impossible  for  them  to  supply  beauti- 
ful incident  and  action  in  their  ornament,  unless  they  see 
beautiful  incident  and  action  in  th(;  world  about  them. 
Inform  their  minds,  refine  their  habits,  and  you  form  and 


106  MODERN    MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  Ill 

rcfiiie  their  designs ;  but  keep  them  illiterate,  uncomibrtable, 
and  in  the  midst  of  unbeautifiil  things,  and  whatever  the_y 
do  "vdl  still  be  spurious,  vulgar,  and  valueless. 

1  ;epeat,  that  I  do  not  ask  you  nor  wish  you  to  build  a 
new  Pisa  for  them.  We  don't  want  either  the  life  or  the 
decorvxtions  of  the  thirteenth  century  back  again ;  and  the 
cireumstances  with  which  you  must  surround  your  work- 
men are  those  simply  of  happy  modern  English  life,  be- 
cause the  designs  you  have  now  to  ask  for  fnmi  your 
workmen  are  such  as  will  make  modern  English  life  beau- 
tiful All  that  gorgcousuess  of  the  middle  ages,  beautiful . 
as  it  sounds  in  description,  noble  as  in  many  respects  it  was 
in  reality,  had,  nevertheless,  for  foundation  and  for  end, 
nothing  but  the  pride  of  life — the  pride  of  the  so-called 
superior  classes  ;  a  pride  which  supported  itself  by  violence 
and  robbery,  and  led  in  the  end  to  the  destruction  both 
of  the  arts  themselves  and  the  States  in  which  they 
floLirished. 

The  great  lesson  of  history  is,  that  all  the  fine  arts 
hitherto — having  been  supported  by  the  selfish  power  of 
the  noblesse,  and  never  having  extended  their  I'ange  to  the 
omfort  or  the  relief  of  the  mass  of  the  people — the  arts,  ] 
Bay,  thus  practised,  and  thus  matured,  have  only  accelerated 
the  ruin  of  the  States  they  adorned ;  and  at  the  moment 
when,  in  any  kingdom,  you  point  to  the  triumphs  of  its 
greatest  artists,  you  point  also  to  the  determined  hour  of 
the  kingdom's  decline.     The  names  of  great  painters  are 


LECT.  III.]  AND   DEvSIGN,  107 

like  passing  bells:  in  the  name  of  Velasquez,  you  heai 
sounded  the  fall  of  Spain;  in  the  name  of  Titian,  that  of 
Venice;  in  the  name  of  Leonardo,  that  of  Milan;  in  the 
name  of  Raphael,  that  of  Rome.  And  there  is  profound 
justice  in  this;  for  in  pro])ortiou  to  the  nobleness  of  the 
power  is  the  guilt  of  its  use  for  purposes  vain  or  vile;  and 
hitherto  the  gi'cater  the  art,  the  more  surely  has  it  been 
used,  and  used  solely,  for  the  decoration  of  ^Jride,*  or  the 
})rovoking  of  sensuality.  Another  course  lies  open  to  us. 
We  may  abandon  the  hope — or  if  you  like  the  words 
better — we  may  disdain  the  temptation,  of  the  pomp  and 
grace  of  Italy  in  her  youth.  For  us  there  can  be  no  more 
the  throne  of  marble — for  us  no  more  the  vault  of  gold — ■ 
Ijut  for  us  there  is  the  loftier  and  lovelier  privilege  of  bring- 
ing the  power  and  charm  of  art  within  the  reach  of  the 
humble  and  the  poor;  and  as  the  magnificence  of  past 
agps  failed  by  its  narrowness  and  its  pride,  ours  may  pre- 
vail and  continue,  by  its  universality  and  its  lowliness. 

And  thus,  between  the  |)icture  of  too  laborious  P]ngland, 
which  we  imagined  as  future,  and  the  picture  of  too  luxu- 
rious Italy,  which  we  remember  in  the  past,  there  may 
exist — there  will  exist,  if  we  do  our  duty — an  intermediate 
condition,  neither  oppressed  by  labour  nor  wasted  in  vanity 
—the  condition  of  a  peaceful  and  thoughtful  temperance  in 
aims,  and  acts,  and  arts, 

*  Whether  religious  or  profane  pride, — ohapel  or  banqueting  room,  - 
is  no  mattei 


108  MODERN    MANUFACTURE  [LECT.  11  j 

We  are  about  to  enter  upon  a  period  of  our  world's  his 
tory  in  whicli  domestic  life,  aided  by  the  arts  of  peace, 
will  slowly,  but  at  last  entirely,  supersede  public  life  and 
he  arts  of  war.  For  our  own  England,  she  will  not,  I 
believe,  be  blasted  throughout  with  furnaces  ;  nor  will  she  be 
encumbered  with  palaces.  I  trust  she  will  keep  her  green 
fields,  her  cottages,  and  her  homes  of  middle  life ;  but  these 
ought  to  be,  and  I  trust  will  be  enriched  with  a  useful, 
truthful,  substantial  form  of  art.  We  want  now  no  more 
feasts  of  the  gods,  nor  martyrdoms  of  the  saints  ;  we  have 
no  need  of  sensuality,  no  place  for  superstition,  or  for  costly 
insolence.  Let  us  have  learned  and  faithful  historical  pamt- 
ing — touching  and  thoughtful  representations,  of  human 
nature,  in  dramatic  painting ;  poetical  and  familiar  renderings 
of  natural  objects  and  of  landscape ;  and  rational,  deeply- 
felt  realizations  of  the  events  which  are  the  subjects  of  our 
religious  faith.  And  let  these  things  we  want,  as  far  aa 
possible,  be  scattered  abroad  and  made  accessible  to  all 
men. 

So  also,  in  manufacture :  we  require  work  substantial 
rather  than  rich  in  make;  and  refined,  rather  than  splen- 
did in  design.  Your  stuffs  need  not  be  such  as  would 
catch  the  eye  of  a  duchess;  but  they  should  be  such  as  may 
at  once  serve  the  need,  and  refine  the  taste,  ol  a  cottager. 
The  prevailing  error  in  English  dress,  especially  among  the 
lower  orders,  is  a  tendency  to  flimsiness  and  gaudiness, 
arising  mainly  from  the  awkward  imitation  of  their  supe- 


hECr.  III.J  AND    DESIGN.  109 

riors.*  It  slioulil  be  one  of  the  first  objects  of  all  ninnu- 
facturers  to  produ?e  stuffs  not  only  beautiful  and  quaint  in 
design,  but  also  adapted  for  evcry-day  service,  and  deco- 
rous in  bumble  and  secluded  life.  And  you  must  remem- 
ber always  that  your  business,  as  manufacturers,  is  to  form 
the  market,  as  much  as  to  supply  it.  If,  in  shortsighted 
and  reckless  eagerness  for  wealth,  you  catch  at  every 
humour  of  the  populace  as  it  shapes  itself  into  momentary 
demand — if,  in  jealous  rivalry  with  neighbouring  States,  oi 
with  other  producers,  you  try  to  attract  attention  by  singu- 
iarities,  novelties,  and  gaudinesscs — to  make  every  design  an 

*  If  tlicir  superiors  would  give  them  simplicity  and  economy  to 
imit.ate,  i(  would,  in  the  issue,  be  well  for  themselves,  as  well  as  for 
those  whom  they  guide.  The  typhoid  fever  of  passion  for  dress,  and  all 
other  display,  which  has  struck  the  upper  classes  of  Europe  at  this 
time,  is  one  of  tlie  most  dangerous  political  elements  we  have  to  deal 
with.  Its  wickedness  I  have  shown  elsewhere  (Polit.  Economy  of 
Art,  p.  G2,  et  seq.) ;  hut  its  wickedness  is,  in  the  minds  of  most  per- 
sons, a  matter  of  no  importance.  I  wish  I  had  time  also  to  show  them 
ita  danger.  I  cannot  enter  here  into  political  investigation  ;  but  this 
is  a  certain  fact,  that  the  wasteful  and  vain  expenses  at  present 
indulged  in  by  the  upper  elapses  are  hastening  the  advance  of  republican- 
ism more  than  any  other  element  of  modern  change.  No  agitators 
no  clubs,  no  epidemical  errors,  ever  were,  or  will  be,  fatal  to  social 
order  in  any  nation.  Nothing  but  the  guilt  of  the  upper  classes,  wan- 
ton, accumulated,  reckless,  and  merciless,  ever  overthrows  them.  Of 
inch  guilt  they  have  now  much  to  answer  for— let  them  look  to  it  iu 
time. 


LIO  MODERN   MANUFACTURE.  [LECT.  Ill 

advertisement,  and  pilfer  every  idea  of  a  successful  neigh- 
bour's, tliat  you  may  insidiously  imitate  it,  or  pompouslv 
eclipse — no  good  design  will  ever  be  possible  to  you,  oi 
perceived  by  you.  You  may,  by  accident,  snatch  the  mar- 
ket ;  or,  by  energy,  command  it ;  you  ma}^  obtain  the  con- 
fidence of  the  public,  and  cause  the  ruin  of  opponent  houses 
or  you  may,  with  equal  justice  of  fortune,  be  ruined  by 
them.  But  whatever  happens  to  you,  this,  at  least,  is  cer- 
tain, that  the  whole  of  your  life  will  have  been  spent  in 
corrupting  public  taste  and  encouraging  public  extrava- 
gance. Every  preference  you  have  won  by  gaudiness  must 
have  been  based  on  the  purchaser's  vanity ;  every  demand 
you  have  created  by  novelty  has  fostered  in  the-  consumer 
a  habit  of  discontent ;  and  when  you  retire  into  inactive 
life,  you  may,  as  a  subject  of  consolation  for  your  declining 
years,  reflect  that  precisely  according  to  the  extent  of  your 
past  operations,  your  life  has  been  successful  in  retarding 
the  arts,  tarnishing  the  virtues,  and  confusing  the  mannera 
of  your  country. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  you  resolve  from  the  first  that, 
so  flir  as  you  can  ascertain  or  discern  what  is  best,  you  will 
produce  what  is  best,  on  an  intelligent  consideration  of  the 
probable  tendencies  and  possible  tastes  of  the  people  whom 
you  supply,  you  may  literally  become  more  influential  for 
all  kinds  of  good  than  many  lecturers  on  art,  or  many  trea- 
tise-writers on  morality.  Considering  the  materials  dealt 
with,  and  the  crude  state  of  art  knowledge  at  the  time,  I 


LECT.  HI.]  AND    DESIGN.  Ill 

do  not  know  that  any  more  wide  or  effective  influence  in 
public  taste  was  ever  exercised  than  that  of  the  Stafford 
shire  manufacture  of  pottery  under  William  Wedgwood 
and  it  only  rests  with  the  manufacturer  in  every  other  busi- 
ness to  determine  whether  he  will,  in  like  maimer,  make  his 
wares  educational  instruments,  or  mere  drugs  of  the  market. 
You  all  should  be,  in  a  certain  sense,  authors:  you  must, 
indeed,  first  catch  the  public  eye,  as  an  author  must  the  pub- 
lic ear;  but  once  gain  your  audience,  or  observance,  and  as 
it  is  in  the  writer's  power  thenceforward  to  publish  what  will 
educate  as  it  amuses — so  it  is  in  yours  to  publish  what  will 
educate  as  it  adorns.  Nor  is  this  surely  a  subject  of  poor 
ambition.  I  hear  it  said  continually  that  men  are  too  am- 
bitious :  alas !  to  me,  it  seems  they  are  never  enough  ambi- 
tious. How  many  are  content  to  be  merely  the  thrivint^ 
merchants  of  a  state,  when  they  might  be  its  guides,  coun- 
sellors, and  rulers — wielding  powers  of  subtle  but  gigantic 
beneficence,  in  restraining  its  follies  while  they  supplied  its 
wants.  Let  such  duty,  such  ambition,  be  once  accepted  in 
their  fulness,  and  the  best  glory  of  European  art  and  of 
European  manufacture  may  yet  be  to  come.  The  paintino-s 
of  Raphael  and  of  Buonaroti  gave  force  to  the  falsehoods 
of  superstition,  and  majesty  to  the  imaginations  of  sin  ;  but 
the  arts  of  England  may  have,  for  thcnr  task,  to  inform  the 
rioul  with  truth,  and  touch  the  heart  with  compassion.  The 
steei  of  Toledo  and  the  silk  of  Genoa  did  but  give  strength 
to  oppression  and  lustre  to  pride:  let  it  be  for  the  furnace 


112  MODEliN    MANUFACTUKE,  ETC.  [LECT.  Ill 

and  for  the  loom  of  England,  as  they  have  already  richly 
earned,  still  more  abundantly  to  bestow,  comfort  on  the 
indigent,  civilization  on  the  rade,  and  to  dispense,  through 
the  peaceful  homes  of  nations,  the  grace  and  the  precious 
ness  of  sunple  adornment,  and  useful  possession. 


LECTURE  TV. 

INFLUENCE    OF   IMAGINATION    IN   ARCHITECTURR 


AN    ADDRESS 


Delivered  to   the   Members   of  the   Architectural   Association,   in   Lyon « 
Inn  Hall,   1857. 

If  we  were  to  be  asked  abruptl}^,  and  required  to  auswei 
briefly,  what  qualities  ebieflj  distinguish  great  artists  from 
feeble  artists,  we  should  answer,  I  suppose,  first,  their  sen- 
sibility and  tenderness ;  secondly,  their  imagination ;  and 
thirdly,  their  industry.  Some  of  us  might,  perhaps,  doubt 
the  justice  of  attaching  so  much  importance  to  this  last 
character,  because  we  hcve  all  known  clever  men  wlio 
were  indolent,  and  dull  men  who  were  industrious.  But 
though  you  may  have  known  clever  men  whc  were 
indolent,  you  never  knew  a  great  man  who  was  so;  and, 
during  such  investigation  as  I  have  been  able  to  give  to 
the  lives  of  the  artists  whose  works  are  in  all  points 
noblest,  no  fiict  ever  looms  so  large  upon  me — no  law  re- 
mains so  steadfast  in  the  universality  of  its  applicMtioii,  as 
the  fact  and  law  that  they  are  all  great  workers :  nothing 
c«nc<u-ning  them  is  matter  of  more  astonishment  than  the 
quantity  they  have  accomplished  in  the  given  length  of 
-heir  life;  and  when    F  Inur  a  young  man  spoken  of,  a? 


1L4  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  fLECT.  IV 

giviug   promise  of  high   genius,  the    first   question    I  ask 
about  him  is  always — 

Does  he  work  ? 

But  though  this  quaUty  of  industry  is  essential  to  an 
artist,  it  does  not  in  anywise  make  an  artist ;  many  people  are 
l:)usy,  whose  doings  are  little  wortli.  Neither  does  sensibi- 
hty  make  an  artist;  since,  as  I  hope,  many  can  feel  both 
strongly  and  nobly,  who  yet  care  nothing  about  art.  But 
the  gifts  wliiich  distinctively  mark  the  artist — without  which 
he  must  be  feeble  in  life,  forgotten  in  death — with  which  he 
may  become  one  of  the  shakers  of  the  earth,  and  one  of 
the  signal  lights  in  heaven — are  those  of  sympathy  and 
imagination.  I  will  not  occupy  your  time,  nor.  incur  the 
risk  of  your  dissent,  by  endeavouring  to  give  any  close 
definition  of  this  last  word.  We  all  have  a  general  and 
sufficient  idea  of  imagination,  and  of  its  work  with  our 
hands  and  in  our  hearts:  we  understand  it,  I  suppose,  as 
the  imaging  or  picturing  of  now  things  in  our  thoughts; 
and  we  always  show  an  involuntary  respect  for  this  power, 
wherever  we  can  recognise  it,  acknowledging  it  to  be  a 
greater  power  than  manipulation,  or  calculation,  or  observa- 
tion, or  any  other  human  faculty.  If  we  see  an  old  woman 
spinuing  at  the  fireside,  and  distributing  her  thread  dexter- 
0USI7  from  the  distafi",  we  respect  her  for  her  manipula- 
tion— if  we  ask  her  how  much  she  expects  to  make  in  a 
year,  and  she  answers  quickly,  we  respect  her  for  her  cal 
culation — if  she  is  watcliiiig  al   lln'  Siim   time  that  none  of 


fiECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  115 

uer  grandchildren  fall  into  the  fire,  we  respect  her  for  nei 
observation — yet  for  all  this  she  may  still  be  a  common 
place  old  woman  enough.  But  if  she  is  all  the  time  tellinji 
her  grandchildren  a  fairy  tale  out  of  her  head,  we  praise 
her  for  her  imagination,  and  say,  she  must  be  a  rather 
remarkable  old  woman. 

Precisely  in  like  manner,  if  an  architect  does  his  work 
ing-drawing  well,  we  praise  him  for  his  manipulation  — if 
he  keeps  closely  within  his  contract,  we  praise  him  for  his 
honest  arithmetic — if  he  looks  well  to  the  laying  of  his 
beams,  so  th.at  nobody  shall  drop  through  the  floor,  w^e 
praise  him  for  his  observation.  But  he  must,  somehow,  tell 
us  a  fairy  tale  out  of  his  head  beside  all  this,  else  we  can- 
not praise  him  for  his  imagination,  nor  speak  of  him  as  wo 
did  of  the  old  woman,  as  being  in  any  wise  out  of  the  com- 
mon way,  a  rather  remarkable  architect.  It  seemed  to  me, 
therefore,  as  if  it  might  interest  you  to-night,  if  we  were  to 
consider  together  what  fairy  tales  are,  in  and  by  architecture, 
to  be  told — what  there  is  for  you  to  do  in  this  severe  art  of 
yours  "  out  of  your  heads,"  as  well  as  by  your  hands. 

Perhaps  the  fii'st  idea  which  a  young  architect  is  apt  to 
be  allured  by,  as  a  head-problem  in  these  experimental  days, 
is  its  being  incumbent  upon  him  to  invent  a  "  new  style'' 
worthy  of  modern  civilization  in  general,  and  of  England 
in  particular  ;  a  style  worthy  of  o\ir  engines  and  telegraphs ; 
as  expansive  tis  steam,  and  as  sparkling  as  electricity. 

But,  if  there  are  any  of  my  li<'aivrs  who  have  bei^n  ira 


116  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [l  LOT.  T 

pressed  with  this  sense  of  inventive  duty,  may  I  ask  them 
first,  whether  their  plan  is  that  every  inventive  architect 
among  us  shall  invent  a  new  style  for  himself,  and  have  a 
county  set  aside  for  his  conceptions,  or  a  province  for  his 
practice?  Or,  must  every  architect  invent  a  little  piece  ol 
the  new  style,  and  all  put  it  together  at  last  like  a  dissected 
map  ?  And  if  so,  when  the  new  style  is  invented,  what  is 
to  be  done  next  ?  I  will  grant  you  this  Eldorado  of  ima 
gination — but  can  you  have  more  than  one  Columbus? 
Or,  if  you  sail  in  company,  and  divide  the  prize  of  your 
discovery  and  the  honour  thereof,  who  is  to  come  after  you 
clustered  Columbuses  ?  to  what  fortunate  islands  of  style 
are  your  architectural  descendants  to  sail,  avaricious  of  new 
lands  ?  When  our  desired  style  is  invented,  will  not  the  best 
we  can  all  do  be  simply — to  build  in  it  ? — and  cannot  you 
now  do  that  in  styles  that  are  known  ?  Observe,  I  grant, 
for  the  sake  of  your  argument,  what  perhaps  many  of  you 
know  that  I  would  not  grant  otherwise — that  a  new  style 
can  be  invented.  I  grant  you  not  only  this,  but  that  it 
shall  be  wholly  different  from  any  that  was  ever  practised 
before.  "We  will  suppose  that  capitals  are  to  be  at  the  bot- 
tom of  pillars  instead  of  the  top ;  and  that  buttresses  shall 
be  on  the  tops  of  pinnacles  mstead  of  at  the  bottom  ;  that 
you  roof  your  apertures  with  stones  which  shall  neither  be 
arcned  nor  horizontal  ;  and  that  you  compose  your  decora- 
tion of  lines  wliich  shall  neither  be  crooked  nor  straight. 
The  furnace  and  the  forge  shall  be  at  your  service :  you 


LECT,  I  V.J  IN   AKCUITECTLIRE.  117 

shall  draw  out  your  plates  of  glass  and  beat  out  your  bars 
of  iron  till  you  have  encompassed  us  all, — if  your  style  is 
of  tlie  practical  kind, — with  endless  perspective  of  black 
skeleton  and  blinding  square, — or  if  your  style  is  to  be  of 
the  ideal  kind — you  shall  wn^ath  your  streets  with  ductile 
leafage,  and  roof  them  with  variegated  crystal— you  shall 
j)Ut,  if  you  will,  all  London  under  one  blazing  dome  ol' 
many  colours  that  shall  light  the  clouds  round  it  with  its 
flashing,  as  far  as  to  the  sea.  And  still,  I  ask  you,  What 
after  this  ?  Do  you  suppose  those  imaginations  of  yours 
will  ever  lie  down  there  asleep  beneath  the  shade  of  your 
iron  leafage,  or  within  the  coloured  light  of  your  enchanted 
dome  ?  Not  so.  Those  souls,  and  fancies,  and  ambitions 
of  yours,  are  wholly  infinite ;  and,  whatever  may  be  done 
by  others,  you  will  still  want  to  do  something  for  your- 
selves ;  if  you  cannot  rest  conUnit  with  Palladio,  neither 
will  you  with  Paxton  :  all  the  metal  and  glass  that  ever 
were  melted  have  not  so  much  weight  in  them  as  will  elo(! 
the  wings  of  one  human  spirit's  aspiration. 

If  you  will  think  over  this  quietly  by  yourselves,  and 
3an  get  the  noise  out  of  your  ears  of  the  perpetual,  empty, 
idle,  incomparably  -(liotic  talk  about  the  necessity  of  some 
novelty  in  architecture,  you  will  soon  see  that  the  very 
essence  of  a  Style,  properly  so  called,  is  that  it  shcnild  be 
practised  /?>r  a^es,  and  ap})lied  to  all  purposes;  and  that  so 
long  as  iiiiy  given  style  is  in  pr;ie1ici',  all  that  is  left  for 
iMdividu:il    iuKigiiiation   to  acconiplisli    uiust  l)e  within   the 


118  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGIJfATION  [LECT.  IV 

scope  of  that  style,  not  in  the  invention  of  a  new  one.  [f 
there  are  any  here,  therefore,  who  hope  to  obtain  celeb I'ity 
by  the  invention  of  some  strange  way  of  building  wliiob 
must  convince  all  Europe  into  its  adoption,  to  them,  for  the 
moment,  I  must  not  be  understood  to  address  myself,  but 
only  to  those  who  would  be  content  with  that  degree  of 
celebrity  which  an  artist  may  enjoy  who  works  in  the 
manner  of  his  forefathers; — which  the  builder  of  Salisbury 
Cathedral  might  enjoy  in  England,  though  he  did  not 
invent  Gothic;  and  which  Titian  might  enjoy  at  Yenice, 
though  he  did  not  invent  oil  painting.  Addressing  myself 
then  to  those  humbler,  but  wiser,  or  rather,  only  wise  stu- 
dents who  are  content  to  avail  themselves  of  some  system 
of  building  already  understood,  let  us  consider  together 
what  room  for  the  exercise  of  the  imagination  may  be  left 
to  us  under  such  conditions.  And,  first,  I  suppose  it  will 
be  said,  or  thought,  that  the  architect's  principal  field  for 
exercise  of  his  invention  must  be  in  the  disposition  of 
lines,  mouldings,  and  masses,  in  agreeable  proportions. 
Indeed,  if  you  adopt  some  styles  of  architecture,  you  can- 
not exercise  invention  in  any  other  way.  And  I  admit 
that  it  requires  genius  and  special  gift  to  do  this  rightly 
Not  by  rule,  nor  by  study,  can  the  gift  of  graceful  propor- 
tionate design  be  obtained  ;  only  by  the  intuition  of  genius 
can  so  much  as  a  single  tier  of  fagade  be  beautifully 
arranged ;  and  the  man  has  just  cause  for  pride,  as  far  aa 
our  gifls  can  ever  be  a  cause  for  pri(l(\  who  finds  himself 


I.ECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCUITECTURE.  lift 

able,  in  a  design  of  his  own,  to  rival  even  the  shnplesi 
arrangement  of  parts  in  one  by  Saninieheli,  Inigo  Jones,  oi 
Christopher  Wren, 

Invention,  then,  and  genius  being  granted,  as  necessary 
to  accomplish  tliis,  let  me  ask  you,  What,  after  all,  with 
this  special  gift  and  genius,  you  iLCive  accomplished,  when 
you  have  arranged  the  lines  of  a  building  beautifully? 

In  the  first  place  you  will  not,  I  think,  tell  me  that  th« 
beauty  there  .attained  is  of  a  touching  or  pathetic  kind 
A  well-disposed  group  of  notes  in  music  will  make  yon 
sometimes  weep  and  sometimes  laugh.  You  can  express 
tlie  depth  of  all  affections  by  thd^e  dispositions  of  sound: 
you  can  give  courage  to  the  soldier,  language  to  the  lover 
consolation  to  the  mourner,  more  joy  to  the  joyful,  more 
humility  to  the  dcn^out.  Can  yon  do  as  much  by  youi 
group  of  lines?  Do  j^ou  suppose  the  front  of  Whiteliall,  a 
singularly  beautiful  one,  ever  inspires  the  two  Horse  Guards, 
during  the  hour  they  sit  opposite  to  it,  with  military  ai" 
dour  ?  Do  you  think  that  the  lovers  in  our  London  walk 
il(nvn  U)  the  front  of  Whitehall  for  consolation  when  mis 
tre.ss(.'S  are  unkind ;  or  that  any  person  wavering  in  duty, 
(ii  feebl(^  in  faitli,  was  ever  confirmed  in  purpose  or  in  creed 
')y  the  pathetic  appeal  of  tho.se  harmonious  architraves? 
Vou  will  not  say  so.  Then,  if  they  cannot  touch,  or 
inM})ire,  or  comfort  any  one,  can  your  architectural  propor- 
tions :imus(>  anyone?  Christmas  is  just  over;  you  have 
doubtless   bee.n  at  many  meiTV  [tartirs  durini;'  the  period 


120  INFLUENCE   OP^   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IT 

Cai  yon  remember  any  in  which  architectural  proportions 
contributed  to  the  entertainment  of  the  evening?  Propoi 
tions  of  notes  in  music  were,  I  am  sure,  essential  to  your 
amusement;  the  setting  of  flowers  in  hair,  and  of  ribands  on 
dresses,  were  also  subjects  of  frequent  admiration  with  you, 
not  inessential  to  your  happiness.  Among  the  juvenile 
members  of  your  society  the  propoi-tion  of  currants  in  cake, 
and  of  sugar  in  comfits,  became  subjects  of  acute  interest; 
and,  when  such  proportions  were  harmonious,  motives  also 
of  gratitude  to  cook  and  to  confectioner.  But  did  you  ever 
see  either  young  or  old  amused  by  the  architrave  of  the 
door?  Or  otherwise  interested  in  the  proportions  of  the 
room  than  as  they  admitted  more  or  fewer  friendly  faces  ? 
N"ay,  if  all  the  amusement  that  there  is  in  the  best  propor- 
tioned architecture  of  London  could  be  concentrated  into 
one  evening,  and  you  were  to  issue  tickets  for  nothing  to 
this  great  proportional  entertainment ; — how  do  you  think 
it  would  stand  between  you  and  the  Drury  pantomime  ? 

You  are,  then,  remember,  granted  to  be  people  of  genius 
—great  and  admirable  ;  and  you  devote  your  lives  to  youi 
art,  but  you  admit  that  you  cannot  comfort  anybody,  you 
cannot  encourage  anybody,  you  cannot  improve  anybody, 
and  you  cannot  amuse  anybody.  I  proceed  then  farther  to 
wk.  Can  you  inform  anybody  ?  Many  sciences  cannot  be 
'4  nsidered  as  highly  touching  or  emotional ;  nay,  perhaps  not 
specially  amusing;  scientific  men  may  sometimes,  in  these 
rnspects,  stand  on  tlie  same  ground  with  you.     As  far  as  we 


LECT.  IV. J  IN    ARCHITECTURE.  121 

can  judge  by  the  results  of  the  late  war,  science  helps  our 
soldiers  about  as  much  as  the  front  of  Whitehall ;  and  at  the 
(Christmas  parties,  the  children  wanted  no  geologists  to  tell 
Uiern  about  the  behaviour  of  bears  and  dragons  in  Queen 
Elizabeth's  time.  Still,  jour  man  of  science  teaches  3'ou 
something ;  he  may  be  dull  at  a  party,  or  helpless  in  a  battle, 
he  is  not  always  that ;  but  he  can  give  you,  at  all  events, 
knowledge  of  noble  facts,  and  open  to  you  the  secrets  of  the 
earth  and  air.  Will  your  architectural  proportions  do  as 
much  'i  Your  genius  is  granted,  and  your  hfe  is  given,  and 
what  do  you  teach  us  ? — Nothing,  I  believe,  from  one  end 
of  that  life  to  the  other,  but  that  two  and  two  make  four, 
and  that  one  is  to  two  as  three  is  to  six. 

You  cannot,  then,  it  is  admitted,  comfort  any  one,  serve 
or  amuse  any  one,  nor  teach  any  one.  Finall}'^,  I  ask.  Can 
you  be  of  Use  to  any  one?  "Yes,"  you  reply;  "certainly 
we  are  of  some  ase — we  architects — in  a  climate  like  this, 
where  it  always  rains."  You  are  of  use  certainly ;  but, 
[)ardon  me,  only  as  builders — not  as  proportionalists.  We 
are  not  talking  of  building  as  a  protection,  but  only  of  that 
special  work  which  your  genius  is  to  do ;  not  of  building 
substantial  and  comfortable  houses  like  Mr.  Cubitt,  but  of 
putting  beautiful  fagades  on  them  like  Inigo  Jones.  And, 
again,  I  ask — Are  you  of  use  to  any  one?  Will  your 
proportions  of  fa9ado  heal  the  sick,  or  clothe  the  naked? 
Supposing  you  devoted  your  lives  to  be  merchants,  you  might 
reflp(;t  at  tlie  close  of  them,  how  many,  fainting  for   want 


122  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGIN A'l'ION  (LECT.  IV 

you  had  brought  corn  to  sustain  ;  hcjw  many,  infected  with 
disease,  you  had  brought  bahns  to  heal ;  how  widely, 
among  multitudes  of  far-away  nations,  you  had  scattered 
the  first  seeds  of  national  power,  and  guided  the  first  rays 
of  sacred  light.  Had  you  been,  in  fine,  anything  else  in  the 
world  but  architectural  designers,  you  might  have  been  of 
some  use  or  good  to  people.  Content  to  be  petty  tradesmen, 
you  would  have  saved  the  time  of  mankind  ; — rough-handed 
daily  labourers,  you  would  have  added  to  their  stock  of 
food  or  of  clothing.  But,  being  men  of  genius,  and  devot- 
ing your  lives  to  the  exquisite  exposition  of  this  genius, 
on  what  achievements  do  you  think  the  memories  of  your 
old  age  are  to  fasten  ?  Whose  gratitude  will  surround  you 
with  its  glow,  or  on  what  accomplished  good,  of  that  greatest 
kind  for  which  men  show  no  gratitude,  will  your  life  rest 
the  contentment  of  its  close  ?  Truly,  I  fear  that  the  ghosts 
of  proportionate  lines  will  be  thin  phantoms  at  your  bed- 
sides— very  speechless  to  you;  and  that  on  all  the 
emanations  of  your  high  genius  you  will  look  back  with 
less  delight  than  you  might  have  done  on  a  cup  of  cold 
water  given  to  him  wdio  was  thirsty,  or  to  a  single  moment 
when  you  had  "prevented  with  your  bread  him  that  fled." 
Do  not  answer,  nor  think  to  answer,  that  with  j'^our  great 
works  and  great  payments  of  workmen  in  them,  you  would 
do  this;  I  know  you  would,  and  will,  as  Builders;  but,  1 
re]:)eat,  it  is  not  your  hiilding  that  I  am  talking  about,  but 
your    brains;    it   is    your   invention    and    imagination    ot 


LECT.  IV.]  IN    ARCHITECI'UKE,  Vli: 

whose  profit  I  am  speaking.  The  good  done  through  the 
building,  observe,  is  done  by  your  employers,  not  by  yoii — 
you  share  in  the  benefit  of  it.  The  good  that  you  person 
ally  must  do  is  by  your  designing;  and  I  compare  you 
with  iniisiciaiis  who  do  good  by  their  pathetic  composing, 
not  as  they  do  good  by  employing  fiddlers  in  tlie  orchestra  ; 
for  it  is  the  public  who  in  reality  do  that,  not  the  musicians. 
So  clearly  keeping  to  this  one  question,  what  good  wc 
architects  are  to  do  by  our  genius;  and  having  found  that 
on  oui'  propoi'tionatc  system  we  can  do  no  good  to  others, 
will  you  telL  me,  lastly,  what  good  we  can  do  to  ourselves  f 
Observe,  nearly  every  other  liberal  art  or  profession  has 
some  intense  pleasure  connected  with  it,  irrespective  of  any 
good  to  others.  As  lawyers,  or  physicians,  or  clergymen, 
you  would  have  the  pleasure  of  investigation,  and  of  histo- 
rical reading,  as  part  of  your  work  :  as  men  of  science  you 
would  be  rejoicing  in  curiosity  perpetually  gratified  respect- 
ing the  laws  and  facts  of  nature :  as  artists  you  would  have 
delight  in  watching  the  external  forms  of  nature:  as  day 
labourers  or  petty  tradesmen,  supposing  you  to  undertake 
Buch  work  with  as  much  intellect  as  you  are  going  to 
devote  to  your  designing,  you  would  find  continued  subjects 
of  interest  in  the  manufacture  or  the  agriculture  which  you 
helped  to  improve;  or  in  the  problems  of  commerce  which 
bore  on  your  business.  But  youi'  iircliitcctural  designing 
leads  you  into  no  pleasant  journeys, — into  no  seeing  of 
lovely  things  — no  discerning  of  just  laws, — no  warmths  oj 


124  INFLUENCE    OF    IMAGINATION  [LECI.  £V 

compassion,  no  humilities  of  veneration,  no  progressive 
state  of  sigiit  or  soul.  Our  conclusion  is — must  be — that 
yon  will  not  amuse,  nor  inform,  nor  help  anybody;  you 
Tvill  not  amuse,  nor  better,  nor  inform  yourselves  ;  you  will 
sink  into  a  state  in  which  you  can  neither  show,  nor  feel, 
nor  see,  anything,  but  that  one  is  to  two  as  three  is  to  six. 
And  in  that  state  what  should  we  call  ourselves?  Men? 
I  think  not.  The  right  name  for  us  would  be — numerators 
and  denominators.     Vulgar  Fractions. 

Shall  we,  then,  abandon  this  theory  of  the  soul  of  archi- 
tecture being  in  proportional  lines,  and  look  whether  we 
can  find  anything  better  to  exert  our  fancies  upon  ? 

May  we  not,  to  begin  with,  accept  this  great  principle — 
that,  as  our  bodies,  to  be  in  health,  must  be  generally  exer- 
cised, so  our  minds,  to  be  in  health,  must  be  generally  culti- 
vated? You  would  not  call  a  man  healthy  who  had  strong 
arms  but  was  paralytic  in  his  feet ;  nor  one  who  could  walk 
well,  but  had  no  use  of  his  hands ;  nor  one  who  could  see 
well,  if  he  could  not  hear.  You  would  not  voluntarily 
reduce  your  bodies  to  any  such  partially  developed  state. 
Much  more,  then,  you  would  not,  if  you  could  help  it, 
reduce  your  minds  to  it.  Now,  your  minds  are  endowed 
with  a  vast  number  of  gifts  of  totally  different  uses — limb? 
t)t  mind  as  it  were,  which,  if  you  don't  exercise,  you  cripple. 
One  is  curiosity;  that  is  a  gift,  a  capacity  of  pleasure  in 
knowing;  Avhich  if  you  destroy,  you  make  yourselves  cold 
anrl  dull.     Another  is  sympathy ;  the  power  of  sharing  ic 


LECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  126 

the  feelings  of  living  creatures,  which  if  you  destroy,  you 
make  yourselves  heard  and  cruel.  Another  of  your  limbs 
of  mind  is  admiration;  the  power  of  .enjoying  beauty-oi 
ingenuity,  which,  if  you  destroy,  you  make  yourselves 
base  and  irreverent.  Another  is  wit;  or  the  power  of 
playing  with  the  lights  on  the  many  sides  of  truth ;  which 
if  you  destroy,  you  make  yourselves  gloomy,  and  less  uso 
ful  and  cheering  to  others  than  you  might  be.  So  that  in 
choosing  your  way  of  work  it  should  be  your  aim,  as  far  as 
{possible,  to  bring  out  all  these  faculties,  as  far  as  they  exist 
in  you;  not  one  merely,  nor  another,  but  all  of  them.  And 
the  way  to  bring  them  out,  is  simply  to  concern  yourselves 
attentively  with  the  subjects  of  each  faculty.  To  cultivate 
sympathy  you  must  be  among  living  creatures,  and  think- 
ing about  them;  and  to  cultivate  admiration,  you  must  be 
among  beautiful  things  and  looking  at  them. 

All  this  sounds  much  like  truism,  at  least  I  hope  it  does, 
for  then  you  will  surely  not  refuse  to  act  upon  it ;  and  to 
consider  farther,  how,  as  architects,  you  are  to  keep  your- 
selves in  contemplation  of  living  creatures  and  lovely 
things. 

You  all  probably  know  the  beautiful  photographs  which 
have  been  published  within  the  last  year  or  two  of  the 
porches  of  the  Cathedral  of  Amiens.  I  hold  one  of  these 
up  to  you,  (merely  that  you  may  know  what  I  am  talking 
about,  as  of  course  you  cannot  see  the  detail  at  this  di» 
tance,  but  you  will  recognise  the  subject.)     Have  you  evei 


126  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IT 

considered  how  much  sympathy,  and  how  much  humour,  are 
developed  in  filling  this  single  doorway*  with  these  sculp- 
tures of  the  history  of  St.  Honore  (and,  by  the  way,  .consi- 
dering how  often  we  English  are  now  driving  up  and  down 
the  Rue  St.  Honore,  we  may  as  well  know  as  much  of  the 
saint  as  the  old  architect  cared  to  tell  us).  You  know  in  all 
legends  of  saints  who  ever  were  bishops,  the  first  thing  you 
are  told  of  them  is  that  they  didn't  want  to  be  bishops.  So 
here  is  St.  Honore,  who  doesn't  want  to  be  a  bishop,  sitting 
eulkily  in  the  corner ;  he  hugs  his  book  with  both  hands, 
and  won't  get  up  to  take  his  crosier;  and  here  are  all  the 
city  aldermen  of  Amiens  come  to  poke  him  up ;  and  all 
the  monks  in  the  town  in  a  great  puzzle  what  they  shall 
do  for  a  bishop  if  St.  Honore  won't  be  ;  and  here's  one  of 
the  monks  in  the  opposite  corner  who  is  quite  cool  about 
it,  and  thinks  they'll  get  on  well  enough  without  St. 
Honor^, — you  see  that  in  his  face  perfectly.  At  last  St. 
Honore  consents  to  be  bishop,  and  here  he  sits  in  a  throne, 
and  has  his  book  now  grandly  on  his  desk  instead  of  his 
knees,  and  he  directs  one  of  his  village  curates  how  to  find 
relics  in  a  wood ;  here  is  the  wood,  and  here  is  the  village 
3urate,  and  here  are  the  tombs,  with  the  bones  of  St.  \ricto- 
rien  and  Gentien  in  them.  ' 

Xfter  this,  St.  Honore  performs  grand  mass,  and  the 
miracle  occurs  of  the  appearance  of  a  hand  blessing  the 

*  The  tympanum  of  the  south  transept  door ;  it  is  to  be  found  gene- 
rally among  all  collections  ot  architectural  photographs. 


LECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.-  127 

wafer,  which  occurrence  afterwards  was  painted  for  the 
arms  of  the  abbey.  Then  St.  Honore  dies ;  and  here  ia 
his  tomb  with  his  statue  on  the  top  ;  and  miracles  are  being 
performed  at  it — a  deaf  man  having  his  ear  touched,  and  a 
blind  man  groping  his  way  up  to  the  tomb  with  his  dog 
Then  here  is  a  great  procession  in  honour  of  the  relics 
of  St.  Honore ;  and  under  his  coffin  are  some  cripples 
being  healed;  and  the  coffin  itself  is  put  above  the 
bar  which  separates  the  cross  from  the  lower  subjects, 
because  the  tradition  is  that  the  figure  on  the  crucifix  of 
the  Church  of  St.  Firmin  bowed  its  head  in  token  of  ac- 
ceptance, as  the  relics  of  St.  Honore  passed  beneath. 

Now  just  consider  the  amount  of  sympathy  with  human 
nature,  and  observance  of  it,  shown  in  this  one  bas-reliei", 
the  sympathy  with  disputing  monks,  with  puzzled  alder- 
men, with  melancholy  recluse,  with  triumphant  prelate, 
with  palsy-stricken  poverty,  with-  ecclesiastical  magni 
ficence,  or  miracle-working  faith.  Consider  how  much 
intellect  was  needed  in  the  architect,  and  how  much 
observance  of  nature,  before  he  could  give  the  expression 
to  these  various  figures — cast  these  multitudinous  draperies 
-  design  these  rich  and  quaint  fragments  of  tombs  and 
altars— weave  with  perfect  animation  the  entangled  branches 
of  the  forest. 

But  you  will  answer  me,  all  this  is  not  architecture  at  all 
—it  is  sculpture.  AVill  you  then  tell  me  precisely  where 
the  separation  exists  betwe(!n  one  and  the  other  ?     We  will 


128  INFLUENCE    OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  W 

begin  at  the  very  beginning.  I  will  show  you  a  piece  of 
what  you  will  certainly  admit  to  be  a  piece  of  pure  architec 
ture  ;*  it  is  drawn  on  the  back  of  another  photograph,  another 
of  these  marvellous  tympana  from  Notre  Dame,  which  you 
call,  I  suppose,  impure.  Well,  look  on  this  picture,  and  on 
this.  Don't  laugh  ;  you  must  not  laugh,  that's  very  impropei 
of  you,  this  is  classical  architecture.  I  have  taken  it  out  of 
the  essay  on  that  subject  in  the  "  Encyclopfedia  Britannica." 
Yet  I  suppose  none  of  you  would  think  yourselves  par- 
ticularly ingenious  architects  if  you  had  "designed  nothing 
more  than  this ;  nay,  I  will  even  let  you  improve  it  into 
any  grand  proportion  you  choose,  and  add  to  it  as  many 
windows  as  you  choose ;  the  only  thing  I  insist  upon  in  our 
specimen  of  pure  architecture  is,  that  there  shall  be  no 
mouldings  nor  ornaments  upon  it.  And  I  suspect  you 
don't  quite  like  your  architecture  so  "  pure  "  as  this.  We 
want  a  few  mouldings,  you  will  say — just  a  few.  Those 
who  want  mouldings,  hold  up  their  hands.  We  are 
unanimous,  I  think.  Will  you,  then,  design  the  profiles  of 
these  mouldings  yourselves,  or  will  you  copy  them?  If 
you  wish  to  copy  them,  and  to  copy  them  always,  of  course 
I  leave  you  at  once  to  your  authorities,  and  your  imagina 
fcions  to  their  repose.  But  if  you  wish  to  design  them 
yourselves,  how  do  you  do  it?  You  draw  the  profile 
according  to  your  taste,  and  you  order  your  mason  to  cul 

♦  See  Appendix  III.,  "  Classical  Architecture." 


LECT.  IV.]  IN  ARCHITECTURE.  129 

it.  Now,  will  you  tell  me  tlie  logical  difference  between 
drawing  the  profile  of  a  moulding  and  giving  ihat  to  be  cut, 
and  drawing  the  folds  of  the  drapery  of  a  statue  and  giving 
Owse  to  be  cut.  The  last  is  much  more  difficult  to  do  than 
the  first ;  but  degrees  of  difficulty  constitute  no  specific 
difference,  and  you  will  not  accept  it,  surely,  as  a  definition 
of  the  difference  between  architecture  and  sculpture,  that 
"  architecture  is  doing  anything  that  is  easy,  and  sculpture 
anything  that  is  difficult." 

It  is  true,  also,  that  the  carved  moulding  represents 
nothing,  and  the  carved  drapery  represents  something ;  but 
you  will  not,  I  should  think,  accept,  as  an  explanation  of 
the  difference  between  architecture  and  sculpture,  this  any 
more  than  the  other,  that  "sculpture  is  art  which  has 
meaning,  and  architecture  art  which  has  none." 

Where,  then,  is  your  difference  ?  In  this,  perhaps,  you 
will  say ;  that  whatever  ornaments  we  can  direct  ourselves, 
and  get  accurately  cut  to  order,  we  consider  architectural. 
The  ornaments  that  we  are  obliged  to  leave  to  the  pleasure 
of  the  workman,  or  the  superintendence  of  some  other 
designer,  we  consider  sculptural,  especially  if  they  are  more 
or  less  extraneous  and  incrusted — not  an  essential  part  of 
the  building. 

Accepting  this  definition,  I  am  compelled  to  reply,  that 
it  is  in  effect  nothing  more  than  nn  amplification  of  my 
first  one — that  whatever  is  easy  you  call  architecture, 
whatever  is  difficult  you  call  sculpture.     For  you  cannot 


130  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT    IT 

suppose  the  arrangement  of  the  place  in  which  the  sculp' 
ture  is  to  be  put  is  so  difficult  or  so  great  a  part  of  the 
design  as  the  sculpture  itself.  For  instance  :  you  all  know 
the  pulpit  of  Niccolo  Pisano,  in  the  baptistry  at  Pisa.  It  is 
composed  of  seven  rich  rekevi,  surrounded  by  panel  mould- 
ings, and  sustained  on  marble  shafts.  Do  you  suppose 
Niccolo  Pisano's  reputation — such  part  of  it  at  least  as  rests 
on  this  pulpit  (and  much  does) — depends  on  the  panel 
mouldings,  or  on  the  relievi  ?  The  panel  mouldings  are  by 
his  hand  ;  he  would  have  disdained  to  leave  even  them  to 
a  common  workman  ;  but  do  you  think  he  found  any  diffi- 
culty in  them,  or  thought  there  was  any  credit  in  them  ? 
Having  once  done  the  sculpture,  those  enclosing  lines  were 
mere  child's  play  to  him  ;  the  determination  of  the  diame- 
ter of  shafts  and  height  of  capitals  was  an  affair  of  minutes: 
his  ivork  was  in  carving  the  Crucifixion  and  the  Baptism. 

Or,  again,  do  you  recollect  Orcagna's  tabernacle  in  the 
church  of  San  Michele,  at  Florence?  That^  also,  consists 
of  rich  and  multitudinous  bas-reliefs,  enclosed  in  panel 
nouldings,  with  shafts  of  mosaic,  and  foliated  arches  sus 
taining  the  canopy.  Do  you  think  Orcagna,  any  more 
than  Pisano,  if  his  spirit  could  rise  in  the  midst  of  us  at 
this  moment,  would  tell  us  that  he  had  trusted  his  fame  to 
the  foliation,  or  liad  put  liis  soul's  pride  into  the  panelling? 
Not  so  ;  he  would  tell  you  that  his  spirit  was  in  the  stoop- 
ing figures  that  stand  round  the  couch  of  the  dyiLg  Virgin. 

Or,  lastly,  do  you  think  the  man  who  designed  the  pro- 


fiECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  131 

cession  on  the  portal  of  Amiens  was  the  subordinate 
workman  ?  that  there  was  an  architect  over  Am,  restrain- 
ing nim  within  certain  limits,  and  ordering  of  him  hia 
bishops  at  so  much  a  mitre,  and  his  cripples  at  so  much  a 
crutch?  Not  so.  Here^  on  this  sculptured  shield,  rests 
the  Master's  hand;  this  is  the  centre  of  the  Master's  thouglit; 
from  this,  and  in  suboroination  to  this,  waved  the  arch  and 
sprang  the  pinnacle.  Having  done  this,  and  being  able  tc 
give  human  expression  and  action  to  the  stone,  all  the  rest 
— the  rib,  the  niche,  the  foil,  the  shaft — were  mere  toys  to 
his  hand  and  accessories  to  his  conception  :  and  if  once  you 
also  gain  the  gift  of  doing  this,  if  once  you  can  carve  one 
fronton  such  as  you  have  here,  I  tell  you,  you  would  be 
able — so  far  as  it  depended  on  your  invention — to  scatter 
cathedrals  over  England  as  fast  as  clouds  rise  from  its 
streams  after  summer  rain.  -, 

Nay,  but  perhaps  you  answer  again,  our  sculptors  at 
present  do  not  design  cathedrals,  and  could  not.  No,  they 
could  not ;  but  that  is  merely  because  we  have  made  archi- 
tecture so  dull  that  they  cannot  take  any  interest  in  it,  and, 
therefore,  do  not  care  to  add  to  their  higher  knowledge  the 
poor  and  common  knowledge  of  principles  of  building. 
You  have  thus  separated  building  from  sculpture,  and  3^ou 
have  taken  away  the  power  of  both;  for  the  sculptor  loses 
nearly  as  much  by  never  having  room  for  the  development 
)f  a  continuous  work,  as  you  do  from  having  reduced  your 
work  tc  a  continuity  of  mechanism.     You  are  essentially 


182  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT,  IV 

and  should  always  be,  the  same  body  of  men,  admitting 
only  such  difference  in  operation  as  there  is  between  the 
work  of  a  painter  at  different  times,  who  sometimes  labours 

n  a  small  picture,  and  sometimes  on  the  frescoes  of  a  pa- 
lace gallery. 

This  conclusion,  then,  we  arrive  at,  must  arrive  at;  the 
fact  being  irrevocably  so  : — that  iif^order  to  give  your  ima- 
gination and  the  other  powers  of  your  souls  full  play,  you 
must  do  as  all  the  great  architects  of  old  time  did — you  must 
yourselves  be  your  sculptors.  Phidias,  Michael  Angelo,, 
Orcagna,  Pisano,  Giotto, — which  of  these  men,  do  you 
think,  could  not  use  his  chisel?  You  say,  "It  is  difficult; 
quite  out  of  your  way."  I  know  it  is ;  nothing  that  is  great 
is  easy;  and  nothing  that  is  great,  so  long  as  you  study 
building  without  sculpture,  can  be  in  your  way.  I  want 
to  put  it  in  your  way,  and  you  to  find  your  way  to  it. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  do  not  shrink  from  the  task  as  if 
the  refined  art  of  perfect  sculpture  were  always  required 
from  you.  For,  though  architecture  and  sculpture  are  not 
separate  arts,  there  is  an  arcliitectural  manner  of  sculpture ; 
and  it  is,  in  the  majority  of  its  applications,  a  comparative- 
ly easy  ona  Our  great  mistake  at  present,  in  dealing  with 
Btone  at  all,  is  requiring  to  have  all  our  work  too  refined  •  ^t 
is  just  the  same  mistake  as  if  we  were  to  require  all  our 
book  illustrations  to  be  as  fine  work  as  Raphael's.  John 
Leech  does  not  sketch  so  well  as  Leonardo  da  Vinci ;  but 

do  you  think  that  the  public  could  easily  sj)are  him  ■;  oi 


LECT.  IV.]  IN    ARCniTECTUBE.  133 

that  lie  is  wrong  in  bringing  out  his  tiJeut  in  the  way  in 
which  it  is  most  efi'ective  ?  Would  you  advise  him,  if  he 
asked  your  advice,  to  give  up  his  wood-blocks  and  take  to 
canvas  ?  I  know  you  would  not ;  neither  would  you  tell 
aim,  I  believe,  on  the  other  hand,  that  because  he  could 
not  draw  as  well  as  Leonardo,  therefore  he  ought  to  draw 
nothing  but  straight  lines  with  a  ruler,  and  circles  with 
compasses,  and  no  figure-subjects  at  all.  That  woufd  be 
some  loss  to  you  ;  would  it  not  ?  You  would  all  be  vexed 
if  next  week's  Punch  had  nothing  in  it  but  proportionate 
Hues,  And  yet,  do  not  you  see  that  you  are  doing  precisely 
the  same  thing  with  your  powers  of  sculptural  design  that  he 
would  be  doing  with  his  powers  of  pictorial  design,  if 
he  gave  you  nothing  but  such  lines.  You  feel  that  you 
cannot  carve  like  Phidias ;  therefore  you  will  not  carve  at 
all,  but  only  draw  mouldings;  and  thus  all  that  interme- 
diate power  which  is  of  especial  value  in  modern  days, — 
that  popular  power  of  expression  which  is  within  the  attain- 
ment of  thousands, — and  would  address  itself  to  tens  of 
thousands, — is  utterly  lost  to  us  in  stone,  though  in  ink  and 
paper  it  has  become  one  of  the  most  desired  luxuries  of 
modern  civilization. 

Here,  then,  is  one  part  of  the  subject  to  which  I  wt)ukl 
especially  invite  your  attention,  namely,  the  distinctive  cha- 
racter which  may  be  wisely  permitted  to  belong  to  architec- 
tural sculpture,  as  distinguished  from  perfect  sculpture  on 
one  side,  and  from  mere  geometrical  decoration  on  thcothei 


134  nSTFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IV 

And  first,  observe  what  an  indulgence  we  have  in  the  dis- 
tance at  which  most  work  is  to  be  seen.  Supposing  we  w«re 
able  to  carve  eyes  and  lips  with  the  most  exquisite  precision, 
it  would  all  be  of  no  use  as  soon  as  the  work  was  put  far 
above  the  eye ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  as  beauties  disap- 
pear by  being  far  withdrawn,  so  will  faults  ;  and  the  mys- 
tery and  confusion  which  are  the  natural  consequence  of 
distahce,  while  they  would  often  render  your  best  skill  but 
vain,  will  as  often  render  your  worst  errors  of  little  conse 
quence ;  nay,  more  than  this,  often  a  deep  cut,  or  a  rude 
angle,  will  produce  in  certain  positions  an  effect  of  expres- 
sion both  startling  and  true,  which  you  never  hoped  for. 
ISTot  that  mere  distance  will  give  animation  to  the  work,  if 
it  has  none  in  itself;  but  if  it  has  life  at  all,  the  distance 
will  make  that  life  more  perceptible  and  powerful  by  soften- 
ing the  defects  of  execution.  So  that  you  are  placed,  aa 
workmen,  in  this  position  of  singular  advantage,  that  you 
may  give  your  fancies  free  play,  and  strike  hard  for  the 
expression  that  you  want,  knowing  that,  if  you  miss  it,  no 
one  will  detect  you ;  if  you  at  all  touch  it,  nature  herself 
will  help  you,  and  with  every  changing  shadow  and  bask- 
ing sunbeam  bring  forth  new  phases  of  your  fancy. 

But  it  is  not  merely  this  privilege  of  being  imperfect 
vrhich  belongs  to  architectural  sculpture.  It  has  a  true 
privilege  of  imagination,  far  excelling  all  that  can  be  granted 
to  the  more  finished  work,  which,  for  the  sake  of  distinc- 
tion  T  will  call, — and  I  don't  think  we  can  have  a  much 


LEC7.  IV.  I  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  135 

better  term — "  furniture  sculpture ;"  sculpture,  that  is, 
which  can  be  moved  from  place  to  place  to  furnish  rooms 
For  observe,  to  that  sculpture  the  spectator  is  usually 
brought  in  a  tranquil  or  prosaic  state  of  mind ;  he  sees  it 
associated  rather  with  what  is  sumptuous  than  sublime,  and 
under  circumstances  which  address  themselves  more  to  liis^ 
comfort  than  his  curiosity.  The  statue  which  is  to  be  pa- 
tlietic,  seen  between  the  flashes  of  footmen's  livery  round 
the  dining-table,  must  have  strong  elements  of  pathos  in 
itself;  and  the  statue  which  is  to  be  awful,  in  the  midst  of 
the  gossip  of  the  drawing-room,  must  have  the  elements  of 
awe  wholly  in  itself  But  the  spectator  is  brought  to  yo^tr 
work  already  in  an  excited  and  imaginative  mood.  He  has 
been  impressed  by  the  cathedral  wall  as  it  loomed  over  the 
low  streets,  before  he  looks  up  to  the  carving  of  its  porch 
— and  his  love  of  mystery  has  been  touched  by  the  silence 
and  the  shadows  of  the  cloister,  before  he  can  set  himself 
to  decipher  the  bosses  on  its  vaulting.  So  that  when  once 
he  begins  to  observe  your  doings,  he  will  ask  nothing  bet- 
ter from  you,  nothing  kinder  from  you,  than  that  you  would 
meet  this  imaginative  temper  of  his  half  way  ; — that  you 
would  farther  touch  the  sense  of  terror,  or  satisfy  the 
expectation  of  things  strange,  which  have  oeen  prompted 
by  the  mystery  or  the  majesty  of  the  surrounding  scene 
And  thus,  your  leaving  forms  more  or  less  undefined,  ot 
carrying  out  your  fancies,  however  extravagant,  in  gro 
tosqueness  of  sliadow  or  sli:ip(\  will  be  for  the  most  par* 


136  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IV 

in  accordance  with  the  temper  of  the  observer;  and  he  la 
likely,  therefore,  much  more  willingly  to  use  his  fancy  to 
help  your  meanings,  than  his  judgment  to  detect  youi 
faults. 

Again.  Remember  that  when  the  imagination  and  feelings 
are  strongly  excited,  they  will  not  only  bear  with  strange 
things,  but  they  will  look  into  minute  things  with  a  delight 
quite. unknown  in  hours  of  tranquillity.  You  surely  must 
remember  moments  of  your  lives  in  which,  under  some 
strong  excitement  of  feeling,  all  the  details  of  visible  objects 
presented  themselves  with  a  strange  intensity  and  insistance, 
whether  you  would  or  no ;  urging  themselves  upon  the 
mind,  and  thrust  upon  the  eye,  with  a  force  of  fascination 
which  you  could  not  refuse.  Now,  to  a  certain  extent,  the 
senses  get  into  this  state  whenever  the  imagination  is  strongly 
excited.  Things  triyal  at  other  times  assume  a  dignity  or 
significance  which  we  cannot  explain ;  but  which  is  only 
the  more  attractive  because  inexplicable :  and  the  powers 
of  attention,  quickened  by  the  feverish  excitement,  fasten 
and  feed  upon  the  minutest  circumstances  of  detail,  and 
remotest  traces  of  intention.  So  that  what  would  at  other 
times  be  felt  as  more  or  less  mean  or  extraneous  in  a  work 
of  sculpture,  and  which  would  assuredly  be  offensive  to 
tlic  perfect  taste  in  its  moments  of  languor,  or  of  critical 
judgment,  will  be  grateful,  and  even  sublime,  when  it  meets 
this  frightened  inquisitiveness,  this  fascinated  watchfulness, 
of  the  roused  imagination.     And  this  is  all  for  your  advan 


LECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  137 

tage ;  for,  in  the  beginnings  of  your  sculpture,  you  wiL 
assuredly  find  it  easier  to  imitate  minute  circumstances  of 
costume  or  character,  than  to  perfect  the  anatomy  of  simpla 
forms  or  the  flow  of  noble  masses ;  and  it  will  be  encou- 
raging to  remember  that  the  grace  you  cannot  perfect,  and 
the  simplicity  you  cannot  achieve,  would  be  in  great  part 
vain,  even  if  you  could  achieve  them,  in  their  appeal  to 
the  hasty  curiosity  of  passionate  fancy  ;  but  that  the  sym- 
pathy which  would  be  refused  to  your  science  will  be  granted 
to  your  innocence :  and  that  the  raind  of  the  general 
observer,  though  wholly  unaffected  by  the  correctness  of 
anatomy  or  propriety  of  gesture,  will  follow  you  with  fond 
and  pleased  concurrence,  as  you  carve  the  knots  of  the 
hair,  and  the  patterns  of  the  vesture. 

Farther  yet.  We  are  to  remember  that  not  only  do  the 
associated  features  of  the  larger  architecture  tend  to  excite 
the  strength  of  fancy,  but  the  architectural  laws  to  which 
you  are  obliged  to  submit  your  decoration  stimulate  its  in- 
genuity. Every  crocket  which  you  are  to  crest  with  sculp- 
ture,— every  foliation  which  you  have  to  fill,  presents  itself 
to  the  spectator's  fancy,  not  only  as  a  pretty  thing,  but  as 
a  j^roblemaiic  thing.  It  contained,  he  perceives  immedi- 
ately, not  only  a  beauty  which  you  wished  to  display,  bul 
a  necessity  which  you  were  forced  to  meet ;  and  the  pro 
blem,  how  to  occupy  such  and  such  a  space  with  organic 
form  in  any  probable  way,  or  liow  to  turn  such  a  boss  oi 
ridge  into  a  conceivable  image  of  life,  becomes  at  once,  tc 


138  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IV 

him  as  to  you,  a  matter  of  amusement  as  much  as  of  adraira 
tion.  'J'he  ordinary  conditions  of  perfection  in  form,  ges- 
ture, or  feature,  are  willingly  dispensed  with,  when  th« 
ugl_^  dwarf  and  ungainly  goblin  have  only  to  gather  them- 
selves into  angles,  or  crouch  to  carry  corbels ;  and  the  want 
of  skill  which,  in  other  kinds  of  work,  would  have  been 
required  for  the  finishing  of  the  parts,  will  at  once  be  for- 
given here,  if  you  have  only  disposed  ingeniously  what 
you  have  executed  roughly,  and  atoned  for  the  rudeness  of 
your  hands  by  the  quickness  of  your  wits. 

Hitherto,  however,  we  have  been  considering  only  the 
circumstances  in  architecture  favourable  to  the  development 
of  the  powers  of  imagination.  A  yet  more  important  point 
for  us  seems,  to  me,  the  place  which  it  gives  to  all  the 
objects  of  imagination. 

For,  I  suppose,  you  will  not  wish  me  to  spend  any  time 
in  proving,  that  imagination  must  be  vigorous  in  propor- 
tion to  the  quantity  of  material  which  it  has  to  handle  ;  and 
that,  just  as  we  increase  the  range  of  what  we  see,  we  in- 
crease the  richness  of  what  we  can  imagine.  Granting  this, 
consider  what  a  field  is  opened  to  your  fancy  merely  in  the 
.••ubject  matter  which  architecture  admits.  Nearly  every 
other  art  is  severely  limited  in  its  subjects — the  landscape 
painter,  for  instance,  gets  little  help  from  the  aspects  of 
beautiful  humanity ;  the  historical  painter,  less,  perhaps, 
th&n  he  ought,  from  the  accidents  of  wild  nature ;  and  the 
pure  sculptor,  still  less,  from  the  '^inor  details  of  common 


LKCT.  IV.l  IN    ARCHITECTURE.  139 

life.  But  is  there  anything  within  range  of  sight,  or  con 
ception,  which  may  not  be  of  use  to  you^  or  in  which  your 
interest  may  not  be  excited  with  advantage  to  your  art? 
From  visions  of  angels,  down  to  the  least  important  gesture 
of  a  child  at  play,  whatever  may  be  conceived  of  Divine,  or 
beheld  of  Human,  may  be  dared  or  adopted  by  you  ; 
throughout  the  kingdom  of  animal  life,  no  creature  is  so 
vast,  or  so  minute,  that  you  cannot  deal  with  it,  or  bring  it 
into  service ;  the  lion  and  the  crocodile  will  couch  about 
your  shafts ;  the  moth  and  the  bee  will  sun  themselves  upon 
your  flowers ;  for  you,  the  fawm  will  leap ;  for  you,  the 
snail  be  slow  ;  for  you,  the  dove  smooth  her  bosom ;  and 
the  hawk  spread  her  wings  toward  the  south.  All  the 
wide  world  of  vegetation  blooms  and  bends  for  you ;  the 
leaves  tremble  that  you  may  bid  them  be  still  under  the 
marble  snow ;  the  thorn  and  the  thistle,  which  the  earth 
casts  forth  as  evil,  are  to  you  the  kindliest  servants ;  no 
dying  petal,  nor  drooping  tendril,  is  so  feeble  as  to  have  no 
help  for  you ;  no  robed  pride  of  blossom  so  kingly,  but  it 
will  lay  aside  its  purple  to  receive  at  your  hands  the  pale 
immortality.  Is  there  anything  in  common  life  too  mean, 
—in  common  things  too  trivial, — to  be  ennobled  by  your 
touch?  As  there  is  nothing  in  life,  so  there  is  nothing  in 
lifelessness  which  has  not  its  lesson  for  you,  or  its  gift ;  and 
when  you  are  tired  of  watching  the  strength  of  the  plume, 
Rnd  the  tenderness  of  the  leaf,  you  may  walk  down  to 
your  rough  river-shore,  or  into  the  thickest  markets  of  youi 


L40  INFLUENCE   OF  IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IV 

thoroughfares  and  there  is  not  a  piece  of  torn  (lable  thai 
will  not  twine  into  a  perfect  moulding ;  there  is  not  a  frag 
raent  of  cast-away  matting,  or  shattered  basket-work,  thai 
will  not  work  into  a  chequer  or  capital.  Yes:  and  if  von 
gather  up  the  very  sand,  and  break  the  stone  on  which  you 
tread,  among  its  fragments  of  all  but  invisible  shells  you  will 
find  forms  that  will  take  their  place,  and  that  proudly, 
among  the  starred  traceries  of  your  vaulting;  and  you, 
who  can  crown  the  mountain  with  its  fortress,  and  the  city 
with  its  towers,  are  thus  able  also  to  give  beauty  to  ashes, 
and  worthiness  to  dust. 

Now,  in  that  your  art  presents  all  this  material  to  you, 
you  have  already  much  to  rejoice  in.  But  you  have  more 
to  rejoice  in,  because  all  this  is  submitted  to  you,  not  to  be 
dissected  or  analyzed,  but  to  be  sympathized  with,  and  to 
bring  out,  therefore,  what  may  be  accurately  called  the 
moral  part  of  imagination.  We  saw  that,  if  we  kept  our- 
selves among  lines  only,  we  should  have  cause  to  envy  the 
naturalist,  because  he  was  conversant  with  facts ;  but  you 
will  have  little  to  envy  now,  if  you  make  yourselves  con- 
versant with  the  feelings  that  arise  out  of  his  facts.  For 
instance,  the  naturalist  coming  upon  a  block  of  marble,  has 
to  begin  considering  immediately  how  far  its  purple  is 
owing  to  iron,  or  its  whiteness  to  magnesia;  he  breaks  his 
piece  of  marble,  and  at  the  close  of  his  day,  has  nothing 
but  a  little  sand  in  his  crucible  and  some  data  added  to  the 
theory  of  the  e.ements.     But  you  approach  your  marble  to 


LECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  141 

sympathize  w'th  it,  and  rejoice  over  its  beauty,  ^ou  cut 
it  a  little  indeed ;  but  only  to  bring  out  its  veins  more  per 
fcctly  and  at  the  end  of  your  day's  work  you  leave  you. 
marble  shaft  with  joy  and  complacency  in  its  perfectness, 
as  marble.  When  you  have  to  watch  an  animal  instead  of 
a  stone,  you  differ  from  the  naturalist  in  the  same  way. 
He  may,  perhaps,  if  he  be  an  amiable  naturalist,  take 
delight  in  having  living  creatures  round  him ; — still,  the 
major  part  of  his  work  is,  or  has  been,  in  counting  fea- 
thers, separating  fibres,  and  analyzing  structures.  But 
your  work  is  always  with  the  living  creature ;  the  thing 
you  have  to  get  at  in  him  .is  his  life,  and  ways  of  going 
about  things.  It  does  not  matter  to  you  how  many  cells 
there  are  in  his  bones,  or  how  many  filaments  in  his  fea- 
thers ;  what  you  want  is  his  moral  character  and  way  of 
behaving  himself;  it  is  just  that  which  your  imagination, 
if  healthy,  will  first  seize — just  that  which  your  chisel,  if 
vigorous,  will  first  cut.  You  must  get  the  storm  spirit  into 
your  eagles,  and  the  lordliness  into  your  lions,  and  the 
tripping  fear  into  your  fawns ;  and  in  order  to  do  this,  you 
must  be  in  continual  sympathy  with  every  fawn  of  them ; 
and  be  hand-in-glove  with  all  the  lions,  and  hand-in-claw 
with  all  the  hawks.  And  don't  fancy  that  you  will  lowei 
yourselves  by  sympathy  with  the  lower  creatures;  you 
cannot  sympathize  rightly  with  the  higher,  unless  you  dc 
with  those :  but  you  have  to  sympathize  with  the  higher, 
too — witli   queens,   and  kings,   and   martyrs,  and   angels 


L42  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IT 

Yes.  and  a'bove  all,  and  more  than  all,  with  simple  huma- 
nity in  all  its  needs  and  ways,  for  there  is  not  one  hurried 
face  that  passes  you  in  the  street  that  will  not  be  impres 
sive  if  you  can  only  fathom  it.  All  history  is  open  tc 
you,  all  high  thoughts  and  dreams  that  the  past  fortunes  of 
men  can  suggest,  all  fairy  land  is  open  to  you — no  vision 
that  ever  haunted  forest,  or  gleamed  over  hill-side,  but 
calls  you  to  understand  how  it  came  into  men's  hearts,  and 
may  still  touch  them ;  and  all  Paradise  is  open  to  you — 
yes,  and  the  work  of  Paradise ;  for  in  bringing  all  this,  in 
perpetual  and  attractive  truth,  before  the  eyes  of  your 
fellow-men,  you  have  to  join  in  the  employment  of  the 
angels,  as  well  as  to  imagine  their  companies. 

And  observe,  in  this  last  respect,  what  a  peculiar  impor- 
tance, and  responsibility,  are  attached  to  your  work,  when 
you  consider  its  permanence,  and  the  multitudes  to  whom 
it  is  addressed.  We  frequently  are  led,  by  wise  people,  to 
consider  what  responsibility  may  sometimes  attach  to 
words,  which  yet,  the  chance  is,  will  be  heard  by  few,  and 
forgotten  as  soon  as  heard.  But  none  of  your  words  will 
be  heard  by  few,  and  none  will  be  forgotten,  for  five  or  six 
hundred  years,  if  you  build  well.  You  will  talk  to  all 
who  pass  by ;  and  all  those  little  sympathies,  those  freaks 
of  fancy,  those  jests  in  stone,  those  workings-out  of  pro> 
blems  in  caprice,  will  occupy  mind  after  mind  of  utterly 
countless  multitudes,  long  after  you  are  gone.  You  have 
not,  like  authors,  to  plead  for  a  hearing,  or  to  fear  oblivion 


LECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  14ii 

Do  but  build  large  enough,  and  carve  boldly  enough,  and 
all  the  world  will  hear  you ;  they  cannot  choose  but  look. 

I  do  not  mean  to  awe  you  by  this  thought ;  I  do  noi 
mean  that  because  you  will  have  so  many  witnesses  and 
watchers,  you  are  never  to  jest,  or  do  anything  gaily  oi 
liglitly;  on  the  contrary,  I  have  pleaded,  from  the  begin- 
ning, for  this  art  of  yours,  especially  because  it  has  room 
for  the  whole  of  your  character — if  jest  is  in  you,  let  the 
jest  be  jested  ;  if  mathematical  ingenuity  is  yours,  let  your 
problem  be  put,  and  your  solution  worked  out,  as  quaintly 
as  you  choose ;  above  all,  see  that  your  work  is  easily  and 
happily  done,  else  it  will  never  make  anybody  else  happy ; 
but  while  you  thus  give  the  rein  to  all  your  impulses,  see 
that  those  impulses  be  headed  and  centred  by  one  noble 
impulse ;  and  let  that  be  Love — triple  love — for  the  art 
which  you  practise,  the  creation  in  which  you  move,  and 
the  creatures  to  whom  you  minister. 

I.  I  say,  first,  Love  for  the  art  which  you  practise.  Be 
assured  that  if  ever  any  other  motive  becomes  a  leading 
one  in  your  mind,  as  the  principal  one  for  exertion,  except 
your  love  of  art,  that  moment  it  is  all  over  with  your 
art.  I  do  not  say  you  are  to  desire  money,  nor  to  desire 
fame,  nor  to  desire  position ;  you  cannot  but  desire  all 
three ;  nay,  you  may — if  you  are  willing  that  I  should  use 
the  word  Love  in  a  desecrated  sense — love  all  throe ;  that 
is,  passionately  covet  them,  yet  you  must  not  covet  or  lovt 
tbera  in  the  first  place.     Men  of  strong  passions  and  imagi 


144  influp:nce  of  imagination         [lect.  i^ 

nations  must  always  care  a  great  deal  for  anything  tliej 
care  for  at  all  but  the  whole  question  is  one  of  first  oi 
?!3Cond,  Does  your  art  lead  you,  or  your  gain  lead  you? 
You  may  like  making  money  exceedingly ;  but  if  it  come 
to  a  fair  question,  whether  you  are  to  make  five  hundred 
pounds  less  by  this  business,  or  to  spoil  your  building,  and 
you  choose  to  spoil  your  building,  there's  an  end  of  you. 
So  you  may  be  as  thirsty  for  fame  as  a  cricket  is  for  cream ; 
but,  if  it  come  to  a  fair  question,  whether  you  are  to  please 
the  mob,  or  do  the  thing  as  you  know  it  ought  to  be  done ; 
and  you  can't  do  both,  and  choose  to  please  the  mob,  it's 
all  over  with  you — there's  no  hope  for  you  ;  nothing  that 
you  can  do  will  ever  be  worth  a  man's  glance  as  he  passes 
by.  The  test  is  absolute,  inevitable — Is  your  art  first  with 
you  ?  Then  you  are  artists  ;  you  may  be,  after  you  have 
made  your  money,  misers  and  usurers ;  you  may  be,  after 
you  have  got  your  fome,  jealous,  and  proud,  and  wretched, 
and  base  :  but  yet,  as  long  as  you  wonH  spoil  your  work^  you 
are  artists.  On  the  other  hand — Is  your  money  first  with 
you,  and  your  fame  first  with  you  ?  Then,  you  may  be 
very  charitable  with  your  money,  and  very  magnificent 
with  your  money,  and  very  graceful  in  the  way  you  wear 
your  reputation,  and  very  courteous  to  those  beneath  you, 
and  very  acceptable  to  those  above  you  ;  but  you  are 
not  artists.     You  are  mechanics,  and  drudges. 

11.  You  must  love  the  creation  you  work  in  the  midst 
o£     For,  wholly  in  proportion  to  the  intensity  of  feeling 


LECT.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE,  145 

whicli  you  bring  to  the  subject  you  have  chosen,  \Nill  be 
the  depth  and  justice  of  our  perception  of  its  character 
And  this  depth  of  feeling  is  not  to  be  gained  on  the  instant, 
when  you  want  to  bring  it  to  bear  on  this  or  that.  It  is 
llie  result  of  the  general  habit  of  striving  to  feel  rightly ; 
and,  among  thousands  of  various  means  of  doing  this,  per- 
liaps  the  one  I  ought  specially  to  name  to  you,  is  the  keep- 
ing yourselves  clear  of  petty  and  mean  cares.  Whatever 
you  do,  don't  be  anxious,  nor  fill  your  heads  with  little 
iihagrins  and  little  desires.  I  have  just  said,  that  you  may 
be  great  artists,  and  yet  be  miserly  and  jealous,  and  trou 
bled  about  many  things.  So  you  may  be ;  but  I  said  also 
that  the  miserliness  or  trouble  must  not  be  in  your  hearts 
all  day.  It  is  possible  that  you  may  get  a  habit  of  saving 
money  ;  or  it  is  possible,  at  a  time  of  great  trial,  you.  may 
yield  to  the  temptation  of  speaking  unjustly  of  a  rival, — 
and  you  will  shorten  your  powers  and  dim  your  sight  even 
by  this ; — but  the  thing  that  you  have  to  dread  far  more 
than  any  such  unconscious  habit,  or  any  such  momentary 
fall — is  the  constancy  of  small  emotions  ; — the  anxiety  whe- 
ther Mr.  So-and-so  will  like  your  work ;  whether  such  and 
such  a  workman  will  do  all  that  you  want  of  him,  and  so 
on ; — not  wrong  feelings  or  anxieties  in  themselves,  but 
impertinent,  and  wholly  incompatible  with  the  full  exer- 
cise of  your  imagination. 

Keep  yourselves,   therefore,  quiet,  peaceful,  with  your 
eyes  open.     It  doesn't  matter  at  all  what  Mr.  So-and-so 

7 


146  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LEOT.  Iv 

thinks  of  your  work;  but  it  matters  a  great  deal  what 
that  bird  is  doing  up  there  in  its  nest,  or  how  that  vaga- 
bond child  at  the  street  corner  is  managing  his  game  of 
knuckle-down.  And  remember,  you  cannot  turn  aside 
from  your  own  interests,  to  the  birds  and  the  children's 
interests,  unless  you  have  long  before  got  into  the  habit  of 
loving  and  watching  birds  and  children  ;  so  that  it  all 
comes  at  last  to  the  forgetting  yourselves,  and  the  living 
out  of  yourselves,  in  the  calm  of  the  great  world,  or  if  you 
will,  in  its  agitation  ;  but  always  in  a  calm  of  your  own 
bringing.  Do  not  think  it  wasted  time  to  submit  your- 
selves to  any  influence  which  may  bring  upon  you  any 
noble  feeling.  Rise  early,  always  watch  the  sunrise,  and 
the  way  the  clouds  break  from  the  dawn ;  you  will  cast 
your  statue-draperies  in  quite  another  than  your  common 
way,  when  the  remembrance  of  that  cloud  motion  is  with 
you,  and  of  the  scarlet  vesture  of  the  morning.  Live 
always  in  the  spring-time  in  the  country ;  you  do  not 
know  what  leaf-form  means,  unless  you  have  seen  the  buds 
burst,  and  the  young  leaves  breathing  low  in  the  sunshine, 
and  wondering  at  the  first  shower  of  rain.  But  above  all, 
accustom  yourselves  to  look  for,  and  to  love,  all  nobleness 
of  gesture  and  feature  in  the  human  form ;  and  remembei 
that  the  highest  nobleness  is  usually  among  the  aged,  the 
poor,  and  the  infirm  ;  you  will  find,  in  the  end,  that  it  ia 
not  the  strong  arm  of  the  soldier,  nor  the  laugh  of  the 
voung  beauty,  that  are  the  best  studies  for  vou.     Look  at 


UECr.  IV.]  IN   ARCHITECTURE.  147 

them,  and  look  at  them  reverently  ;  but  be  assured  that 
endurance  is  nobler  than  strength,  and  patience  than 
beauty  ;  and  that  it  is  not  in  the  high  church  pews,  where 
the  gay  dresses  are,  but  in  the  church  free  seats,  where  the 
widows'  weeds  are,  that  you  may  see  the  faces  that  will  fit 
best  between  the  angels'  wings,  in  the  church  porch. 

III.  And  therefore,  lastly,  and  chiefly,  you  must  love 
the  creatures  to  whom  you  minister,  your  fellow-men  ;  for, 
if  you  do  not  love  them,  not  only  will  you  be  little  inte- 
rested in  the  passing  events  of.life,  but  in  all  your  gazing  at 
humanity,  you  will  be  apt  to  be  struck  only  by  outside 
form,  and  not  by  expression.  It  is  only  kindness  and  ten- 
derness which  will  ever  enable  you  to  see  what  beauty 
there  is  in  the  dark  eyes  that  are  sunk  with  weeping,  and  in 
the  paleness  of  those  fixed  faces  which  the  earth's  adversity 
has  compassed  about,  till  they  shine  in  their  patience  like 
dying  watchflres  through  twilight.  But  it  is  not  this  only 
wiiich  makes  it  needful  for  you,  if  you  would  be  great,  to 
be  also  kind ;  there  is  a  most  important  and  all-essential 
reason  in  the  very  nature  of  your  own  art.  So  soon  as 
you  desire  to  build  largely,  and  with  addition  of  noble 
sculpture,  you  will  find  that  your  work  must  be  associa- 
tive. You  cannot  carve  a  whole  cathedral  yourself — you 
can  carve  but  few  and  simple  parts  of  it.  Either  your  own 
work  must  be  disgraced  in  the  mass  of  the  collateral  inferi- 
ority, or  you  must  raise  your  fellow-designers  to  corrcspon 
dence  of  power.     If  you  have  genius,  you  will  yourselves 


i.48  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION  [LECT.  IV 

bake  the  lead  in  the  bailding  you  design  ;  you  will  carve 
its  porch  and  direct  its  disposition.  But  for  all  subsequent 
advancement  of  its  detail,  you  must  trust  to  the  agency 
and  the  invention  of  others;  and  it  rests  with  you  eithei 
to  repress  what  faculties  your  workmen  have,  into  cunning 
subordination  to  your  own;  or  to  rejoice  in  discovering 
even  the  powers  that  may  rival  you,  and  leading  forth  mind 
after  mind  into  fellowship  with  your  fancy,  and  association 
with  your  fame. 

I  need  not  tell  you  that  if  you  do  the  first — if  you 
endeavour  to  depress  or  disguise  the  talents  of  your  subor- 
dinates— ^you  are  lost;  for  nothing  could  imply  more  darkly 
and  decisively  than  this,  that  your  art  and  your  work  were 
not  beloved  by  you  ;  that  it  was  your  own  prosperity  that 
you  were  seeking,  and  your  own  skill  only  that  you  cared 
to  contemplate.  I  do  not  say  that  you  must  not  be  jealous 
at  all ;  it  is  rarely  in  human  nature  to  be  wholly  without 
jealousy ;  and  you  may  be  forgiven  for  going  some  day 
sadly  home,  when  you  find  some  youth,  unpractised  and 
unapproved,  giving  the  life-stroke  to  his  work  which  you, 
after  years  of  training,  perhaps,  cannot  reach;  but 
your  jealousy  must  not  conquer — your  love  of  your 
building  must  conquer,  helped  by  your  kindness  of 
Heart.  See — I  set  no  high  or  difficult  standard  before 
you.  I  do  not  say  that  you  are  to  surrender  your  pre 
eminence  in  mere  unselfish  generosity.  But  I  do  say 
that  you  must  surrender  your  pre-eminence  in  your  lovfl 


LECT.  IV.J  IN    ARCHITECTURE.  149 

of  your  building  helped  by  your  kindness;  and  that  whom 
soevei  you  find  better  able  to  do  what  will  adorn  it  than 
you, — that  person  you  are  to  give  place  to :  and  to  console 
yourselves  for  the  humiliation,  first,  by  your  joy  in  seeing 
the  edifice  grow  more  beautiful  under  his  chisel,  and 
secondly,  by  your  sense  of  having  done  kindly  and  justly. 
But  if  you  are  morally  strong  enough  to  make  the  kind- 
ness and  justice  the  first  motive,  it  will  be  better ; — best  of 
all — if  you  do  not  consider  it  as  kindness  at  all,  but  bare 
and  stern  justice  ;  for,  truly,  such  help  as  we  can  give  each 
other  in  this  world  is  a  debt  to  each  other ;  and  the  man 
^ho  perceives  a  superiority  or  a  capacity  in  a  subordinate, 
and  neither  confesses,  nor  assists  it,  is  not  merely  the  with- 
holder  of  kindness,  but  the  committer  of  injury.  But  be 
the  motive  what  you  will,  only  see  that  you  do  the  thing , 
and  take  the  joy  of  the  consciousness  that,  as  your  art 
embraces  a  wider  field  than  all  others — and  addresses  a 
vaster  nmltitude  than  all  others — and  is  surer  of  audience 
than  all  others — so  it  is  profounder  and  holier  in  Fellow- 
ship than  all  others.  The  artist,  when  his  pupil  is  perfect, 
must  see  him  leave  his  side  that  he  may  declare  his  distinct, 
perhaps  opponent,  skill.  Man  of  science  wrestlers  with 
man  of  science  for  priority  of  discovery,  and  pursues  in 
pangs  of  jealous  haste  his  solitary  inquiry.  You  alone  arc 
called  by  kindness, — by  necessity, — by  equity,  to  fraternity 
of  toil ;  and  thus,  in  those  misty  and  massive  piles  which 
rise  above  the  domestic  roofs  of  our  ancient  cities,  there 


L50  INFLUENCE   OF   IMAGINATION,  ETC.       [LECT.  IV 

was — there  may  be  again — a  meaning  more  profound  and 
true  than  any  that  fancy  so  commonly  has  attached  to  them. 
Men  say  their  pinnacles  point  to  heaven.  Why,  so  doe? 
every  tree  that  buds,  and  every  bird  that  rises  as  it  singa 
Men  say  their  aisles  are  good  for  worship.  Why,  so  ia 
every  mountain  glen,  and  rough  sea-shore.  But  this  they 
have  of  distinct  and  indisputable  glory, — that  their  mighty 
walls  were  never  raised,  and  never  shall  be,  but  by  men 
who  love  and  aid  each  other  in  their  weakness ; — that  all 
their  interlacing  strength  of  vaulted  stone  has  its  founda- 
tion upon  the  stronger  arches  of  manly  fellowship,  and  all 
their  changing  grace  of  depressed  or  lifted  pinnacle  owes 
its  cadence  and  completeness  to  sweeter  symmetries  of 
human  soul. 


^^ 


LECTUKE  V. 

THE   WORK    OF   IRON,    IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND    POLICY. 


A  LECTURE 


Delivered  a«  Tunhridge  Wells,  February,  1858. 

When  first  I  licard  that  yoa  wished  me  to  address  you 
this  evening,  It  was  a  matter  of  some  doubt  with  mc- 
whether  I  could  find  any  subject  that  would  possess  any 
sufficient  interest  for  you  to  justify  my  bringing  you  out  of 
your  comfortable  houses  on  a  winter's  night.  When  1 
venture  to  speak  about  my  own  special  business  of  art,  it 
is  almost  always  before  students  of  art,  among  whom  I  may 
sometimes  permit  myself  to  be  dull,  if  I  can  feel  that  I  an. 
useful:  but  a  mere  talk  about  art,  especially  without 
examples  to  refer  to  (and  I  have  been  unable  to  prepare 
any  careful  illustrations  for  this  lecture),  is  seldom  of  much 
interest  to  a  general  audience.  As  I  was  considering  what 
you  might  best  bear  with  me  in  speaking  about,  there  canu> 
naturally  into  my  mind  a  subject  connected  with  the  origin 
and  present  prosperity  of  the  town  you  live  in;  and,  il 
tjeemed  to  me,  in  the  out-branchings  of  it,  capable  of  a  very 
general  interest.  When,  long  ago  (T  am  afraid  to  think 
how  long).  Tnnbridge  Wells  was  my  Switzerland,  and  I 


152  THE    WORK    OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

used  to  be  brought  down  here  in  the  suramei,  a  sufficiently 
active  child,  rejoicing  in  the  hope  of  clambering  sandstone 
cliffs  of  stupendous  height  above  the  common,  there  used 
sometimes,  as,  I  suppose,  there  are  in  the  lives  of  all 
children  at  the  Wells,  to  be  dark  days  in  my  life — days  of 
condemnation  to  the  pantiles  and  band — under  which 
calamities  my  only  consolation  used  to  be  in  watching,  at 
every  turn  in  my  walk,  the  welling  forth  of  the  spring  over 
the  orange  rim  of  its  marble  basin.  The  memory  of  the 
clear  water,  sparkling  over  its  saffron  stain,  came  back  to 
me  as  the  strongest  image  connected  with  the  place  ;  and  it 
struck  me  that  you  might  not  be  unwilling,  to-night,  to 
think  a  little  over  the  full  significance  of  that  saffron  stain, 
and  of  the  power,  in  other  ways  and  other  functions,  of  the 
steelly  element  to  which  so  many  here  owe  returning 
strength  and  life ; — chief  as  it  has  been  always,  and  is  yet 
more  and  more  markedly  so  day  by  day,  among  the  precious 
gifts  of  the  earth. 

The  subject  is,  of  course,  too  wide  to  be  more  than 
suggestively  treated  ;  and  even  my  suggestions  must  be  few, 
and  drawn  chiefly  from  my  own  fields  of  work ;  neverthe- 
less, I  think  I  shall  have  time  to  indicate  some  courses  of 
thought  which  you.  may  afterwards  follow  out  for  yourselves 
if  they  interest  you ;  and  so  I  will  not  shrink  from  the  full 
Bcope  of  the  subject  which  I  have  announced  to  you— th: 
functions  of  Iron,  in  Nature,  Art,  and  Policy. 

Without  more  preface,  I  will  take  uy)  the  first  head 


LECT.  V.J  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND   POLICY.  lab 

I  Iron  in  Nature. — You  all  probably  know  that  the 
ochreous  stain,  which,  perhaps,  is  oft^en  thonglit  to  spoil 
the  basin  of  your  spring,  is  iron  in  a  state  of  rust :  ani  when 
y  M  see  rusty  iron  in  other  places  you  generally  think,  not 
only  that  it  spoils  the  places  it  stains,  but  that  it  is  spoiled 
itself — that  rusty  iron  is  spoiled  iron. 

For  most  of  our  uses  it  generally  is  so ;  and  because  we 
cannot  use  a  rusty  knife  or  razor  so  well  as  a  polished  one, 
we  suppose  it  to  be  a  great  defect  in  iron  that  it  is  subject 
to  rust.  But  not  at  all.  On  the  contrary,  the  most  perfect 
and  useful  state  of  it  is  that  ochreous  stain ;  and  therefore 
it  is  endowed  with  so  ready  a  disposition  to  get  itself  into 
that  state.  It  is  not  a  fault  in  the  iron,  but  a  virtue,  to  be 
so  fond  of  getting  rusted,  for  in  that  condition  it  fulfils  ita 
most  important  functions  in  the  universe,  and  most  kindly 
duties  to  Ynankind.  Nay,  in  a  certain  sense,  and  almost  a 
literal  one,  we  may  say  that  iron  rusted  is  Living ;  l)iit 
when  pure  or  polished,  Dead.  You  all  probably  know  that 
in  the  mixed  *air  we  breathe,  the  part  of  it  essentially  need- 
ful to  us  is  called  oxygen  ;  and  that  this  substance  is  to  all 
animals,  in  the  most  accurate  sense  of  the  word,  "breath  of 
ife."  The  nervous  power  of  life  is  adifferent  thing  ;  but  tlu- 
up])orting  element  of  the  breath,  without  which  the  blood, 
and  therefore  the  life,  cannot  be  nourished,  is  this  oxygen. 
N"ow  it  is  this  very  same  air  which  the  iron  breathes  when 
it  gets  rusty.  It  takes  the  oxygen  rr.)m  the  atmosjihero  a? 
eagerly  as  we  d(i,  thougli  it  uses  it  dillcrently.     ^flio  iron 


154  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT,  Y 

keeps  all  that  it  gets ;  we,  and  other  animals,  part  with  it 
again  ;  but  the  metal  absolutely  keeps  what  it  has  onoe 
received  of  this  aerial  gift ;  and  the  ochrcous  dust  which 
we  so  much  despise  is,  in  fact,  just  so  much  nobler  than 
pure  iron,  in  so  far  as  it  is  iron  and  the  air.  Nobler,  and 
more  useful — for,  indeed,  as  I  shall  be  able  to  show  you 
presently — the  main  service  of  this  metal,  and  of  all  other 
metals,  to  us,  is  not  in  making  knives,  and  scissors,  and 
pokers,  and  pans,  but  in  making  the  ground  we  feed  from, 
and  nearly  all  the  substances  first  needful  to  our  existence. 
For  these  are  all  nothing  but  metals  and  oxygen — metals 
with  breath  put  into  them.  Sand,  lime,  clay,  and  the  rest 
of  the  earths-  potash  and  soda,  and  the  rest  of  the  alkalies 
— are  all  of  them  metals  which  have  undergone  this,  so  tc 
speak,  vital  change,  and  have  been  rendered  fit  for  the 
service  of  man  by  permanent  unity  with  the  purest  air 
which  he  himself  breathes.  There  is  only  one  metal  which 
does  not  rust  readily  ;  and  that,  in  its  influence  on  Man 
hitherto,  has  caused  Death  rather  than  Life  ;  it  will  not  be 
put  to  its  right  use  till  it  is  made  a  pavement  of,  and  so 
trodden  under  foot. 

Is  there  not  something  striking  in  this  fact,  considered 
largely  as  one  of  the  types,  or  lessons,  furnished  by  the 
inanimate  creation  ?  Here  you  have  your  hard,  bright, 
cold,  lifeless  metal — good  enough  for  swords  and  scissors 
— but  not  for  food.  You  think,  perhaps,  that  your  iron 
18   wonderfully   useful  in  a  pure  form,    but  how   would 


LEOT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,   ART,    AND   POLICY.  l55 

you  like  the  world,  if  all  youi  meadows,  instead  of  grass, 
grew  nothing  but  iron  wire — if  all  your  arable  ground 
instead  of  being  made  of  sand  and  clay,  were  suddenly 
turned  into  flat  surfaces  of  steel — if  the  whole  earth,  instead 
of  its  green  and  glowing  sphere,  rich  with  forest  and  flower, 
showed  nothing  but  the  image  of  the  vast  furnace  of  a 
ghastlj  engine — a  globe  of  black,  lifeless,  excoriated  metal  ? 
It  would  be  that, — probably  it  was  once  that ;  but  assuredly 
it  would  be,  were  it  not  that  all  the  substance  of  which  it 
is  made  sucks  and  breathes  the  brilliancy  of  the  atmosphere : 
and  as  it  breathes,  softening  from  its  merciless  hardness,  it 
falls  into  fruitful  and  beneficent  dust ;  gathering  itself  again 
into  the  earths  from  which  we  feed,  and  the  stones  with 
which  wc  build ; — into  the  rocks  that  frame  the  mountains, 
and  the  sands  that  bind  the  sea. 

Hence,  it  is  impossible  for  you  to  take  up  the  most  insig- 
nificant pebble  at  your  feet,  without  being  able  to  read,  if 
you  like,  this  curious  lesson  in  it.  You  look  upon  it  at 
first  as  if  it  were  earth  only.  Nay,  it  answers,  "  I  am  not 
earth — I  am  earth  and  air  in  one ;  part  of  that  blue  heaven 
which  you  love,  and  long  for,  is  already  in  me ;  it  is  all  my 
life — without  it  I  should  be  nothing,  and  able  for  nothing; 
I  could  not  minister  to  you,  nor  nourish  you — I  should  be 
ft  cruel  and  helpless  thing;  but,  because  there  is,  according  to 
my  need  and  place  in  creation,  a  kind  of  soul  in  me,  I  have 
become  capable  of  good,  and  hcljjful  in  the  circles  of  vitality." 

Thus  far  the  same  interest  attaches  to  all  the  earths,  and 


15(3  THE    WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

all  tue  metals  of  which  they  are  made ;  but  a  deeper  inter 
est,  and  larger  beneficence  belong  to  that  ochreous  earth  of 
iron  which  stains  the  marble  of  your  springs.  It  stams 
much  besides  that  marble.  It  stains  the  great  earth  where* 
soever  you  can  see  it,  far  and  wide — it  is  the  colouring 
substance  appointed  to  colour  the  globe  for  the  sight,  as 
well  as  subdue  it  to  the  service  of  man.  You  have  just 
seen  your  hills  covered  with  snow,  and,  perhaps,  have 
enjoyed,  at  first,  the  contrast  of  their  fair  white  with  the 
dark  blocks  of  pine  woods ;  but  have  you  ever  considered 
how  you  would  like  them  always  white — not  pure  white, 
but  dirty  white — the  white  of  thaw,  with  all  the  chill  of 
snow  in  it,  but  none  of  its  brightness  ?  That  i^  what  the 
colour  of  the  earth  would  be  without  its  iron ;  that  would 
be  its  colour,  not  here  or  there  only,  but  in  all  places, 
and  at  all  times.  Follow  out  that  idea  till  you  get  it  in 
some  detail.  Think  first  of  your  pretty  gravel  walks  in 
your  gardens,  yellow  and  fine,  like  plots  of  sunshine  be- 
tween the  flower-beds ;  fancy  them  all  suddenly  turned  to 
the  colour  of  ashes.  That  is  what  they  would  be  without 
iron  ochre.  Think  of  your  winding  walks  o\  er  the  com 
mon,  as  warm  to  the  eye  as  they  are  dry  to  the  foot,  and 
imagine  them  all  laid  down  suddenly  with  gray  cinders. 
Then  pass  beyond  the  common  into  the  country,  and  pause 
at  the  first  ploughed  field  that  you  see  sweeping  up  the 
hill  sides  in  the  sun,  with  its  deep  brown  furrows,  and 
wealth  of  ridges  all  a-glow,  heaved  aside  by  the  plough 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND    POLICY.  157 

«hare,  like  deep  folds  of  a  mantle  of  russet  velvet — fancj 
it  all  changed  suddenly  into  grisly  furrows  in  a  field  of 
mud  That  is  what  it  would  be  without  iron.  Pass  on,  io 
fkney,  over  hill  and  dale,  till  you  reach  the  bending  line  of 
the  sea  shore ;  go  down  upon  its  breezy  beach — watch  the 
white  foam  flashing  among  the  amber  of  it,  and  all  the 
blue  sea  embayed  in  belts  of  gold  :  then  fancy  those 
circlets  of  far  sweeping  shore  suddenly  put  into  mounds  of 
mourning — all  those  golden  sands  turned  into  gray  slime, 
the  fairies  no  more  able  to  call  to  each  other,  "  Come  untc 
these  yellow  sands  ;"  but,  "  Come  unto  these  drab  sands." 
That  is  what  they  would  be,  wdthout  iron. 

Iron  is  in  some  sort,  therefore,  the  sunshine  and  light  cf 
landscape,  so  far  as  that  light  depends  on  the  ground  ;  but 
it  is  a  source  of  another  kind  of  sunshine,  quite  as  im- 
portant to  us  in  the  way  we  live  at  present — sunshine,  not 
of  landscape,  but  of  dwelling-place. 

In  these  days  of  swift  locomotion  I  may  doubtless  assume 
that  most  of  my  audience  have  been  somewhere  out  of 
England — have  been  in  Scotland,  or  France,  or  Switzer* 
land.  Whatever  may  have  been  their  impression,  on  re- 
turning to  their  own  country,  of  its  superiority  or  inferiority 
in  other  respects,  they  cannot  but  have  felt  one  thing  about 
it— the  comfortable  look  of  its  towns  and  villages.  Fo- 
reign towns  are  often  very  picturesque,  very  beautiful,  but 
they  never  have  quite  that  look  of  warm  self-sufficiency 
and  wholesome  quiet  with  which  our  villages  nestle  thera 


158  THE    WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  \ 

selves  down  among  the  green  fields.  If  you  will  take  the 
trouble  to  examine  into  the  sources  of  this  impression, 
you  will  find  that  by  far  the  greater  part  of  that  warm  and 
satisfactory  appearance  depends  upon  the  rich  scarlet  colour 
1)1'  the  bricks  and  tiles.  It  does  not  belong  to  the  neat 
I'uilding — very  neat  building  has  an  uncomfortable  rather 
than  a  comfortable  look — but  it  depends  on  the  warm 
building;  our  villages  are  dressed  in  red  tiles  as  our  old 
women  are  in  red  cloaks ;  and  it  does  not  matter  how  worn 
th'5  cloaks,  or  how  bent  and  bowed  the  roof  may  be,  so 
long  as  there  are  no  holes  in  either  one  or  the  other,  and 
the  sobered  but  unextinguishablc  colour  still  glows  in  the 
shadow  of  the  hood,  and  burns  among  the  green  mosses  of 
the  gable.  And  what  do  you  suppose  dyes  your  tiles  of 
cottage  roof?  You  don't  paint  them.  It  is  nature  whv# 
puts  all  that  lovely  vermilion  into  the  clay  for  you ;  and 
all  that  lovely  vermilion  is  this  oxide  of  iron.  Think, 
therefore,  what  your  streets  of  towns  would  become — -ugly 
enough,  indeed,  already,  some  of  them,  but  still  comfort- 
able-looking— if  instead  of  that  warm  brick  red,  the  houses 
became  all  pepper-and-salt  colour.  Fancy  your  country' 
villages  changing  from  that  homely  scarlet  of  theirs  which, 
in  its  sweet  suggestion  of  laborious  peace,  is  as  honourable 
a.s  the  soldiers'  scarlet  of  laborious  battle — suppose  all 
those  cottage  roofs,  I  say,  turned  at  once  into  the  colour  of 
anbaked  clay,  the  colour  of  street  gutters  in  rainy  weatliCT 
That's  what  they  would  be,  without  iron. 


.EOT    v.",  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND   POLICY.  159 

There  is,  however,  yet  another  effect  of  colour  in  oui 
Knglisli  country  towns  which,  perhaps,  you  may  not  all 
yourselves  have  noticed,  but  for  which  you  must  take  the 
word  of  a  sketcher.  They  are  not  so  often  merely  warm 
scarlet  as  they  are  warm  purple  ; — a  more  l)eautiful  colour 
still :  and  they  owe  this  colour  to  a  mingling  with  the  ver^ 
milion  of  the  deep  grayish  or  purple  hue  of  our  fine 
Welsh  slates  on  the  more  respectable  roofs,  made  more 
blue  still  by  the  colour  of  intervening  atmosphere.  If  you 
examine  one  of  these  Welsh  slates  freshly  broken,  you  will 
find  its  purple  colour  clear  and  vivid  ;  and  although  never 
strikingly  so  after  it  has  been  long  exposed  to  weather,  it 
always  retains  enough  of  the  tint  to  give  rich  harmonies  of 
distant  purple  in  opposition  to  the  green  of  our  woods  and 
fields.  Whatever  brightness  or  power  there  is  in  the  hue 
is  entirely  owing  to  the  oxide  of  iron.  Without  it  the 
slates  would  either  be  pale  stone  colour,  or  cold  gray,  or 
black. 

Thus  far  we  have  only  been  considering  the  use  and 
pleasantness  of  iron  in  the  common  earth  of  clay.  But  there 
are  tliree  kinds  of  earth  which  in  mixed  mass  and  ])r©- 
valent  quantity,  form  the  world,  Those  are,  in  common 
language,  the  earths  of  clay,  of  lime,  and  of  flint.  Many 
other  elements  are  mingled  with  these  in  sparing  quantities  ■ 
biit  the  great  frame  and  substance  of  the  earth  is  made  of 
th  386  three,  so  that  wherever  you  stand  on  solid  ground, 
in  any  country  of  the  globe,  the  thing  that  is  mainly  undej 


160  THE   WORK   OF   IKON,  [LE(!T,  V 

your  feet  will  be  cither  clay,  limestone,  or  some   ionditioE 
of  tlie  earth  of  flint,  mingled  with  both. 

These  being  what  we  have  usually  to  deal  with,  Nature 
seems  to  have  set  herself  to  make  these  three  substances  a* 
interesting  to  us,  and  as  beautiful  for  us,  as  she  can.  The 
clay,  being  a  soft  and  changeable  substance,  she  doesn't 
take  much  pains  about,  as  we  have  seen,  till  it  is  baked  • 
she  brings  the  colour  into  it  only  when  it  receives  a  per 
manent  form.  But  the  limestone  and  flint  she  paints,  in  her 
own  way,  in  their  native  state :  and  her  object  in  painting 
them  seems  to  be  much  the  same  as  in  her  painting  of 
flowers ;  to  draw  us,  careless  and  idle  human  creatures,  to 
watch  her  a  little,  and  see  what  she  is  about — that  being  on 
the  whole  good  for  us, — her  children.  For  Nature  is  always 
carrying  on  very  strange  work  with  this  limestone  and  flint 
of  hers :  laying  down  beds  of  them  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea ;  building  islands  out  of  the  sea ;  filling  chinks  and 
veins  in  mountains  with  curious  treasures ;  petrifying 
mosses,  and  trees,  and  shells;  in  fact,  carrying  on  all  sorts 
of  business,  subterranean  or  submarine,  which  it  would  be 
highly  desirable  for  us,  who  profit  and  live  by  it,  to  notice 
as  it  goes  on.  And  apparently  to  lead  us  to  do  this,  she 
makes  picture-books  for  us  of  limestone  and  flint;  and 
tempts  us,  like  foolish  children  as  we  are,  to  read  her  books 
by  tht  pretty  colours  in  them.  The  pretty  colours  in  her 
limestone-books  form  those  variegated  marbles  which  all 
mankind  have  taken  delight  to  polish  and  build  with  from 


1>ECT.  .Vj  IN   NATURE,    ARl,    AND    POLICY.  161 

the 'beginning  of  time ;  and  the  pretty  colours  in  her  flint- 
books  form  those  agates,  jaspere,  cornelians,  bloodstones, 
'.)nyxes.  cairngorms,  chrysoprases,  which  men  have  m  like 
ma.'.mer  taken  delight  to  cut,  and  polish,  and  make  oma- 
menf^K  of,  from  the  beginning  of  time ;,  and  yet,  so  much  of 
oabies  are  they,  and  so  fond  of  looking  at  the  pictures  instead 
of  reading  the  book,  that  I  question  whether,  after  six  thou 
sand  years  of  cutting  and  polishing,  there  are  above  two  or 
three  people  out  of  any  given  hundred,  who  know,  or  care  to 
know,  how  a  bit  of  agate  or  a  bit  of  marble  was  made,  or 
painted. 

How  it  was  made,  may  not  be  always  very  easy  to  say , 
but  with  what  it  was  paint(>d  there  is  no  manner  of  question. 
All  those  beautiful  violet  veinings  and  variegations  of  the 
marbles  of  Sicily  and  Spain,  the  glowing  orange  and  amber 
colours  of  those  of  Siena,  the  deep  russet  of  the  Eosso 
antico,  and  the  blood-colour  of  all  the  precious  jaspers  thai 
enrich  the  temples  of  Italy ;  and,  finally,  all  the  lovely 
transitions  of  tint  in  the  pebbles  of  Scotland  and  the  Ehine, 
which  form,  though  not  the  most  precious,  by  far  the  most 
interesting  portion  of  our  modern  jewellers'  work ; — all 
these  are  painted  by  nature  with  this  one  material  only, 
variously  proportioned  and  applied — the  oxide  of  iron  that 
stains  your  Tunbridge  springs. 

But  this  is  not  all,  nor  the  best  part  of  the  work  of  iron, 
fts  serN  ice  in  producing  these  beautiful  stonc^s  is  only  ren- 
dered to  ricli  people,  who  can  afford  to  quarry  and  poliab 


162  THE    WORK   OF    IRON.  [LECI.  A 

tkem.  But  Nature  paints  for  all  the  world,  poor  and  rich 
together:  and  while,  therefore,  she  thus  adorns  the  inner- 
most rocks  of  her  hills,  to  tempt  jour  investigation,  oi 
indulge  your  luxury, — she  paints,  far  more  carefully,  the 
outsides  of  the  hills,  which  are  for  the  eyes  of  the  shepherd 
and  the  ploughman.  I  spoke  just  now  of  the  effect  in  the 
roofs  of  our  villages  of  their  purple  slates :  but  if  the  slates 
are  beautiful  even  in  their  flat  and  formal  rows  on  house- 
roofs,  much  more  are  they  beautiful  on  the  rugged  crests 
and  flanks  of  their  native  mountains.  Have  you  ever 
considered,  in  speaking  as  we  do  so  often  of  distant  blue 
hills,  what  it  is  that  makes  them  blue  ?  To  a  certain  extent 
it  is  distance  ;  but  distance  alone  will  not  do  it.  Man}^  hills 
look  white,  however  distant.  That  lovely  dark  purple 
colour  of  our  Welsh  and  Highland  hills  is  owing,  not  to 
tlieir  distance  merely,  but  to  their  rocks.  Some  of  their 
rocks  are,  indeed,  too  dark  to  be  beautiful,  being  black  or 
ashy  gray;  owing  to  imperfect  and  porous  structure.  But 
when  you  see  this  dark  colour  dashed  with  russet  and  blue, 
and  coming  out  in  masses  among  the  green  ferns,  so  purple 
that  you  can  hardly  tell  at  first  whether  it  is  rock  or  lieather, 
then  you  must  thank  your  old  Tunbridge  friend,  the  oxide 
of  iron. 

But  tliis  is  not  all.  It  is  necessary  for  the  beauty  of  hill 
Bcenery  that  Nature  should  colour  not  only  her  soft  rocks, 
but  her  hard  ones ;  and  she  colours  them  with  the  same 
thing,  only  more  beautifully.     Perhaps  you  have  wonderet^ 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NA.TURE,   ART,    AND   POLICY.  163 

at  my  use  of  the  word  "  purple,"  so  often  of  stones  ;  but 
the  Greeks,  and  still  more  the  Romans,  who  had  profound 
respect  for  purple,  used  it  of  stone  long  ago.  You  have  all 
heard  of  "  porphyry"  as  among  the  most  precious  of  thie 
harder  massive  stones.  The  colour  which  gave  it  that 
noble  name,  as  well  as  that  which  gives  the  flush  to  all  the 
rosy  granite  of  Egypt — yes,  and  to  the  rosiest  summit?  of 
the  Alps  themselves — is  still  owing  to  the  same  substance— 
your  humble  oxide  of  iron. 

\nd  last  of  all : 

A  nobler  colour  than  all  these — the  noblest  colour  evei 
tfeen  .on  this  earth — one  which  belongs  to  a  strength  greater 
than  that  of  the  Egyptian  granite,  and  to  a  beauty  greater 
than  that  of  the  sunset  or  the  rose — is  still  mysteriously 
connected  with  the  presence  of  this  dark  iron.  I  believe  it 
is  not  ascertained  on  what  the  crimson  of  blood  actually 
depends;  but  the  colour  is  connected,  of  course,  with  its 
vitality,  and  that  vitality  with  the  existence  of  iron  as  one 
of  its  substantial  elements. 

Is  it  not  strange  to  find  this  stern  and  strong  metal  min- 
gled so  delicately  in  our  human  life,  that  we  cannot  even 
blush  without  its  help  ?  Tiiink  of  it,  my  fair  and  gentle 
hearers ;  how  terrible  the  alternative — sometimes  you  have 
actually  no  choice  but  to  be  brazen-faced,  or  iron-faced  I 

In  this  slight  review  of  some  of  the  functions  of  the 
metal,  you  obscrvi;  that  I  confine  myself  strictly  to  its 
operations  as  a  colouring  element.     I  should  only  confuse 


164  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECI    \ 

your  conception  of  the  facts,  if  I  enaeavcured  to  descrilw 
its  uses  as  a  substantial  element,  either  in  strengthening  rocks 
or  influencing  vegetation  by  the  decomposition  of  rocks.  1 
have  not,  therefore,  even  glanced  at  any  of  the  more  serious 
ases  of  the  metal  in  the  economy  of  nature.  But  what  I 
wish  you  to  carry  clearly  away  with  you  is  the  remem- 
brance that  in  all  these  uses  the  metal  would  be  nothing 
without  the  air.  The  pure  metal  has  no  power,  and  never 
occurs  in  nature  at  all  except  in  meteoric  stones,  whose  fall 
no  one  can  account  for,  and  which  are  useless  after  they 
have  fallen  :  in  the  necessary  work  of  the  world,  the  iron  is 
invariably  joined  with  the  oxygen,  and  would  be  capable 
of  no  service  or  beauty  whatever  without  it. 

II.  Iron  in  Art. — Passing,  then,  from  the  offices  of  the 
metal  in  the  operations  of  nature  to  its  uses  in  the  hands 
of  man,  you  must  remember,  in  the  outset,  that  the  type 
which  has  been  thus  given  you,  by  the  lifeless  metal,  of  the 
action  of  body  and  soul  together,  has  noble  antitype  in  the 
operation  of  all  human  power.  All  art  worthy  the  name 
is  the  energy — neither  of  the  human  body  al»ne,  nor  of  the 
liuman  soul  alone,  but  of  both  united,  one  guiding  the 
other :  good  craftsmanship  and  work  of  the  lingers,  joined 
with  good  emotion  and  work  of  the  heart. 

There  is  no  good  art,  nor  possible  judgment  of  art,  when 
these  two  are  not  united ;  yet  we  are  constantly  trying  tc 
separate  them.  Our  amateurs  cannot  be  persuaded  bul 
that  they  may  produce  some  kind  of  art  by  their  fancy  oj 


LECT.  v.]  IN  NATURE,   ART,   AND   POLICY.  165 

sensibility,  without  going  througli  the  necessary  manual 
toil.  Thai  is  entirely  hopeless.  Without  a  certain  num- 
ber, and  that  a  very  great  number,  of  steady  acts  of  hand 
-  -a  piactice  as  careful  and  constant  as  would  be  necessary 
to  learn  any  other  manual  business — no  drawing  is  possible. 
On  the  other  side,  the  workman,  and  those  who  employ 
him,  are  continually  trying  to  produce  art  by  trick  or  habit 
of  fingers,  without  using  their  fancy  or  sensibility.  That 
also  is  hopeless.  Without  mingling  of  heart-passion  with 
hand-power,  no  art  is  possible.*  The  highest  art  unites 
both  in  their  intensest  degrees :  the  action  of  the  hand  at 
its  finest,  with  that  of  the  heart  at  its  fullest. 

Hence  it  follows  that  the  utmost  power  of  art  can  only 
be  given  in  a  material  capable  of  receiving  and  retaining 
the  influence  of  the  subtlest  touch  of  the  human  hand. 
That  hand  is  the  most  perfect  agent  of  material  power 
existing  in  the  universe  ;  and  its  full  subtlety  can  only  bo 
shown  when  th©  material  it  works  on,  or  with,  is  entirely 
yielding.  The  chords  of  a  perfect  instrument  will  receive 
it,  but  not  of  an  imperfect  one ;  the  softly  bending  point 
of  the  hair  pencil,  and  soft  melting  of  colour,  will  receive 
it,  but  not  even  the  chalk  or  pen  point,  still  less  the  steel 
point,  chisel,  or  marble.  The  hand  of  a  sculptor  may, 
indeed,  be  as  subtle  as  that  of  a  painter,  but  all  its  subtlety 
is  not  bestjwable  nor  expressible:    the  touch  of  Titian, 

*  No  fine  art.  that  is.  See  the  previous  defiuition  of  fine  art  J 
p.  W. 


166  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECf.  V 

Correggio,  or  Turner  *  is  a  far  more  marvellous  piece  of 
nervous  a(;tion  than  can  be  shown  in  anything  but  colour, 
or  in  the  very  highest  conditions  of  executive  expression 
in  music.  In  proportion  as  the  material  worked  upon  ^a 
less  delicate,  the  execution  necessarily  becomes  lower,  and 
the  art  with  it.  This  is  one  main  principle  of  all  work. 
Another  is,  that  whatever  the  material  you  choose  to  work 
with,  3"0ur  art  is  base  if  it  does  not  bring  out  the  distinctive 
qualities  of  that  material. 

The  reason  of  this  second  law  is,  that  if  you  don't  want 
the  qualities  of  the  substance  you  use,  you  ought  to  use 
some  other  substance :  it  can  be  only  affectation,  and  desire 
to  display  your  skill,  that  lead  you  to  employ  a  refractor}/ 
substance,  and  therefore  your  art  will  all  be  base.  Glass, 
for  instance,  is  eminently,  in  its  nature,  transparent.  If 
you  don't  want  transparency,  let  the  glass  alone.  Do  not 
try  to  make  a  window  look  like  an  opaque  picture,  but 
take  an  opaque  ground  to  begin  with.  Again,  marble  is 
eminently  a  solid  and  massive  substance.  Unless  you  want 
mass  and  solidity,  don't  work  in  marble.  If  you  wish  for 
lightness,  take  wood;  if  for  freedom,  take  stucco;  if  for 
ductility,  take  glass.  Don't  try  to  carve  feathers,  or  treea 
or  nets  or  foam,  out  of  marble.  Carve  white  limbs  and 
broad  breasts  only  out  of  that. 

So  again,  iron  is  eminently  a  ductile  and  tenacious  sub 

♦  See  Appendix  IV.  "  Subtlety  of  Hand." 


LKOT.  v.]  IN   NATUKE,    ART,    AND   POLICY.  167 

Stance — tenacious  above  all  things,  ductile  more  than  most. 
When  3'ou  want  tenacity,  therefore,  and  involved  form, 
take  iron.  It  is  eminently  made  for  that.  It  is  the 
material  given  to  the  sculptor  as  the  companion  of  marble, 
with  a  message,  as  plain  as  it  can  well  be  spoken,  from  the 
lips  of  the  earth-mother,  "Here'-s  for  you  to  cut,  and  here's 
for  you  to  hammer.  Shape  this,  and  twist  that.  What  is 
solid  and  simple,  carve  out;  what  is  thin  and  entangled, 
beat  out.  I  give  you  all  kinds  of  forms  to  be  delighted  in; 
— fluttering  leaves  as  well  as  fair  bodies ;  twisted  brandies 
as  well  as  open  brows.  The  leaf  and  the  branch  you  may 
beat  and  drag  into  their  imagery  :  the  body  and  brow  you 
shall  revereiltly  touch  into  their  imagery.  And  if  you 
choose  rightly  and  work  rightly,  what  you  do  shall  be  safe 
afterwards.  Your  slender  leaves  shall  not  break  off  in  my 
tenacious  iron,  though  they  may  be  rusted  a  little  with  an 
iron  autumn.  Your  broad  surfaces  shall  not  be  unsmoothed 
in  my  pure  crystalline  marble — no  decay  shall  touch  them. 
But  if  you  carve  in  the  marble  what  will  break  with  a 
touch,  or  mouhl  in  the  metal  what  a  stain  of  rust  o:  verdi- 
gris will  spoil,  it  is  your  fault — not  mine." 

These  are  the  main  principles  in  this  matter;  which,  like 
nearly  all  other  right  principles  in  art,  we  moderns  deliyht 
in  contra^^iicting  as  directly  and  specially  as  may  be.  We 
continually  look  for,  and  praise,  in  our  exhibitions,  the 
sculpture  of  veils,  and  lace,  and  thin  leaves,  and  all  kinds 
of  impossible  things  pushed  as  far  as  possible  in  th(>  fragile 


168  THE   WORK  OF   IRON,  [LKCT.  V 

stone,  for  the  sake  of  showing  the  sculptor's  dexterity  * 
On  the  other  hand,  we  cast  our  iron  into  bars — brittle, 
though  an  inch  thick — sharpen  them  at  the  ends,  and  con- 
sider fences,  and  other  work,  made  of  such  materials,  deco- 
1  litive !  I  do  not  believe  it  would  be  easy  lo  calculate  the 
amount  of  mischief  done  to  our  taste  in  England  by  that 
fence  iron-work  of  ours  alone.  If  it  were  asked  of  us,  by  a 
single  characteristic,  to  distinguish  the  dwellings  of  a  country 
into  two  broad  sections  ;  and  to  set,  on  one  side,  the  places 
where  people  were,  for  the  most  part,  simple,  happy,  bene- 
volent, and  honest ;  and,  on  the  other  side,  the  places  where 
at  least  a  great  number  of  the  people  were  sophisticated, 
unkind,  uncomfortable,  and  unprincipled,  there  is,  I  think, 
one  feature  that  you  could  fix  upon  as  a  positive  test :  the 
uncomfortable  and  unprincipled  parts  of  a  country  would 
be  tlie  parts  where  people  lived  among  iron  railings,  and 

*  I  do  not  mean  to  attach  any  degree  of  blame  to  the  effort  to  repre- 
sent leafage  in  marble  for  certain  expressive  purposes.  The  later  works 
of  Mr.  Munro  have  depended  for  some  of  their  most  tender  thought? 
on  a  delicate  and  skilful  use  of  such  accessories.  And  in  general,  leaf 
3culplure  is  good  and  admirable,  if  it  renders,  as  in  Gothic  work,  the 
f^race  and  lightness  of  the  leaf  by  the  arrangement  of  light  and  shadow 
— supporting  the  masses  well  by  strength  of  stone  below ;  but  all 
carving  is  base  which  proposes  to  itself  slightness  as  an  aim,  and  tries  to 
imitate  the  absolute  thinness  of  thin  or  slight  things,  as  much  modei-a 
wood  carving  does.  I  saw  in  Italy,  a  year  or  two  ago,  a  marol«  sculp 
ture  of  birds'  nests. 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,    ART.    AND    POLICY.  169 

the  comfortable  and  principled  parts  where  they  had  none.. 
A  broad  generalization,  you  will  say  !  Perhaps  a  little  too 
broad ;  yet,  in  all  sobriety,  it  will  come  truer  than  you 
think.  Consider  every  other  kind  of  fence  or  defence,  and 
you  will  find  some  virtue  in  it ;  but  in  the  iron  railing 
none.  There  is,  first,  your  castle  rampart  of  stone — some 
what  too  grand  to  be  considered  here  among  our  types  ol 
fencing ;  next,  your  garden  or  park  wall  of  brick,  which 
has  indeed  often  an  unkind  look  on  the  outside,  but  there  is 
more  modesty  in  it  than  unkindness.  It  generally  means,  not 
that  the  builder  of  it  wants  to  shut  you  out  from  the  view 
of  his  garden,  but  from  the  view  of  himself:  it  is  a  frank 
statement  that  as  he  needs  a  certain  portion  of  time  to  him- 
self, so  he  needs  a  certain  portion  of  ground  to  himself, 
and  must  not  be  stared  at  when  he  digs  there  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves, or  plays  at  leapfrog  with  his  boys  from  school,  (^r 
talks  over  old  times  with  his  wife,  walking  up  and  down  in 
the  evening  sunshine.  Besides,  the  brick  wall  has  good 
practical  service  in  it,  and  shelters  you  from  the  east  wind, 
and  ripens  your  peaches  and  nectarines,  and  glows  in  au- 
tumn like  a  snnny  bank.  And,  moreover,  your  brick  wall, 
if  you  build  it  properly,  so  that  it  shall  stand  long  enough, 
is  a  beautiful  tiling  when  it  is  old,  and  has  assumed  its 
grave  purple  red,  touched  with  mossy  green. 

Next  to  your  lordly  wall,  in  dignity  of  enclosure,  cornea 
your  close-set  wooden  paling,  wliicli  is  more  objectionable, 
because  it  commonly  moans  enclosure  on  a  larger  scale  than 

8 


170  THE   WORK   OF    [RON,  jLECT.   V 

people  want.  Still  it  is  significative  of  pleasant  parks,  and 
well-kept  field  walks,  and  herds  of  deer,  and  other  such 
aristocratic  pastoralisms,  which  have  here  and  there  their 
proper  place  in  a  country,  and  may  be  passed  without  any 
discredit. 

Next  to  your  paling,  comes  your  low  stone  dyke,  your 
mountain  fence,  indicative  at  a  glance  either  of  wild  hill 
country,  or  of  beds  of  stone  beneath  the  soil ;  the  hedge 
of  the  mountains — delightful  in  all  its  associations,  and 
yet  more  in  the  varied  and  craggy  forms  of  the  loose  stones 
it  is  built  of;  and  next  to  the  low  stone  wall,  your  lowland 
hedge,  either  in  trim  line  of  massive  green,  suggestive  of 
the  pleasances  of  old  Elizabethan  houses,  and  smooth 
alleys  for  aged  feet,  and  quaint  labyrinths  for  young  ones, 
or  else  in  fair  entanglement  of  eglantine  and  virgin's 
bower,  tossing  its  scented  luxuriance  along  our  country 
waysides; — how  many  such  you  have  here  among  your 
pretty  hills,  fruitful  with  black  clusters  of  the  bramble  for 
boys  in  autumn,  and  crimson  hawthorn  berries  for  birds  in 
winter.  And  then  last,  and  most  difficult  to  class  among 
fences,  comes  your  handrail,  expressive  of  all  sorts  of 
things;  sometimes  having  a  knowing  and  vicious  look, 
wliich  it  learns  at  race-courses ;  sometimes  an  innocent  and 
tender  look,  which  it  learns  at  rustic  bridges  over  cre^j 
brooks;  and  sometimes  a  prudent  and  protective  look, 
which  it  learns  on  passes  of  tlie  Alps,  where  it  has  josts  of 
granito   and   bars  of  l>in(',  and   gnard,«  the   l)rows  of  cliffs 


LEGT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND    POLIO  T.  171 

and  the  banks  of  torrents.  So  that  in  all  these  Rinds  ol 
defence  there  is  some  good,  pleasant,  or  noble  meaning 
But  what  meaning  has  the  iron  railing  ?  Either,  observe, 
that  you  are  living  in  the  midst  of  such  bad  characters  that 
you  must  keep  them  out  by  main  force  of  bar,  or  that  you 
are  yourself  of  a  character  requiring  to  be  kept  inside  in 
the  same  manner.  Your  iron  railing  always  means  thieves 
outside,  or  Bedlam  inside  ; — it  can  mean  nothing  else  than 
that.  If  the  people  outside  were  good  for  anything,  a  hint 
in  the  way  of  fence  would  be  enough  for  them;  but 
because  they  are  violent  and  at  enmity  with  you,  you  are 
forced  to  put  the  close  bars  and  the  spikes  at  the  top.  Last 
summer  I  was  lodging  for  a  little  while  in  a  cottage  in  the 
country,  and  in  front  of  my  low  window  there  were,  first, 
some  beds  of  daisies,  then  a  row  of  gooseberry  and  currant 
bushes,  and  then  a  low  wall  about  three  feet  above  the 
ground,  covered  with  stone-cress.  Outside,  a  corn-field, 
with  its  green  ears  glistening  in  the  sun,  and  a  field  path 
througli  it,  just  past  the  garden  gate.  From  my  window  I 
could  see  every  peasant  of  the  village  who  passed  that  way, 
with  basket  on  arm  for  market,  or  spade  on  shoulder  fcjr 
field.  When  I  was  inclined  for  society,  I  could  lean  ovei 
my  wall,  and  talk  to  anybody ;  when  I  was  inclined  foi 
science,  I  could  botanize  all  along  the  top  of  my  wall- 
there  were  four  species  of  stone-cress  alone  growing  on  it 
and  when  I  was  inclined  for  exercise,  I  could  jump  ove7 
my  wall,  backwards  and    forwards.      That's  the  sort  of 


172  THE   WOKK   OF   IRON,  [LEOT.  V 

fence  to  have  in  a  Christian  country ;  not  a  thing  whiolj 
you  can't  walk  inside  of  without  making  yourself  look 
like  a  wild  beast,  nor  look  at  out  of  your  window  in  the 
morning  without  expecting  to  see  somebody  impaled  upon 
it  in  -the  night. 

And  yet  farther,  observe  that  the  iron  railing  is  a  useless 
fence — it  can  shelter  nothing,  and  support  nothing;  you 
can't  nail  your  peaches  to  it,  nor  protect  your  flowers  with 
it,  nor  make  anything  whatever  out  of  its  costly  tyranny  ; 
and  besides  being  useless,  it  is  an  insolent  fence ; — it  says 
plainly  to  everybody  who  passes — "  You  may  be  an  honest 
person, — but,  also,  you  may  be  a  thief:  honest  or  not,  you 
shall  not  get  in  here,  for  I  am  a  respectable  person,  and 
much  above  you  ;  you  shall  only  see  what  a  grand  place  I 
have  got  to  keep  you  out  of — look  here,  and  depart  in 
humiliation." 

This,  however,  being  in  the  present  state  of  civilization 
a  frequent  manner  of  discourse,  and  there  being  unfortu- 
nately many  districts  where  the  iron  railing  is  unavoidable, 
it  yet  remains  a  question  whether  you  need  absolutely 
make  it  ugly,  no  less  than  significative  of  evil.  You  must 
have  railings  round  your  squares  in  London,  and  at  the 
sides  of  your  areas ;  but  need  you  therefore  have  railings 
so  ugly  that  the  constant  sight  of  them  is  enough  to  neu- 
tralise the  efiect  of  all  the  schools  of  art  in  the  kingdom  ? 
You  need  not.  Far  from  such  necessity,  it  is  even  in  youi 
power  to  turn  all  your  police  force  of  iron  bars  actually 


LECT,  V.J  IN    NATURE,    ART,    AND    POLICY.  173 

into  drawing  masters,  and  natural  historians.  Not,  of 
course,  without  some  trouble  and  some  expense ;  jou  can 
do  nothing  much  worth  doing,  in  this  world,  without 
trouble,  jou  can  get  nothing  much  worth  having  without 
expense.  The  main  question  is  only — what  is  worth  doing 
and  having : — Consider,  therefore,  if  this  be  not.  Here  is 
your  iron  railing,  as  yet,  an  uneducated  monster ;  a  som- 
bre seneschal,  incapable  of  any  words,  except  his  perpetual 
*  Keep  out  1"  and  "  Away  with  you  !"  "Would  it  not  be 
worth  some  trouble  and  cost  to  turn  this  ungainly  ruffian 
porter  into  a  well-educated  servant ;  who,  while  he  was 
severe  as  ever  in  forbidding  entrance  to  evilly  disposed 
people,  should  yet  have  a  kind  word  for  well-disposed 
people,  and  a  pleasant  look,  and  a  little  useful  information 
at  his  command,  in  case  he  should  be  asked  a  question  by 
the  passers-by  ? 

"We  have  not  time  to-night  to  look  at  many  examples  of 
ironwork ;  and  those  I  happen  to  have  by  me  are  not  the 
best;  ironwork  is  not  one  of  my  special  subjects  of  study; 
s(j  that  I  only  have  memoranda  of  bits  that  happened  to 
come  into  picturesque  subjects  which  I  was  drawing  for 
other  reasons.  Besides,  external  ironwork  is  more  difficult 
to  find  good  than  any  other  sort  of  ancient  art;  for  when 
it  gets  rusty  and  broken,  people  are  sure,  if  they  can  afford 
it,  to  send  it  to  the  old  iron  shop,  and  get  a  fine  new  grating 
instead;  and  in  the  great  cities  of  Italy,  the  old  iron  i? 
thus  nearly  all  gone:  the  best  bits  F  rrmonibcr  in  the  open 


174  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LEOT.  V, 

air  were  at  Brescia; — fantastic  sprays  of  laurel-like  foliage 
rising  over  the  garden  gates ;  and  there  are  a  few  fine  fiag- 
ments  at  Verona,  and  some  good  treilis-work  enclosing  the 
Scala  tombs ;  but  on  the  whole,  the  most  interesting  pieces, 
though  by  no  means  the  purest  in  style,  are  to  be  found 
in  out-of-the-way  provincial  towns,  where  people  do  not 
care,  or  are  unable,  to  make  polite  alterations.  The  little 
town  of  Bellinzona,  for  instance,  on  the  south  of  the  Alps, 
and  that  of  Sion  on  the  north,  have  both  of  them  complete 
schools  of  ironwork  in  their  balconies  and  vineyard  gates. 
That  of  Bellinzona  is  the  best,  though  not  very  old — I 
suppose  most  of  it  of  the  seventeenth  century ;  still  it  is 
very  quaint  and  beautiful.  Here,  for  example,  .(see  frontis- 
piece,) are  two  balconies,  from  two  different  houses ;  one 
has  been  a  cardinal's,  and  the  hat  is  the  principal  orna- 
ment of  the  balcony ;  its  tassels  being  wrought  with 
delightful  delicacy  and  freedom;  and  catching  the  eye 
clearly  even  among  the  mass  of  rich  wreathed  leaves. 
These  tassels  and  strings  are  precisely  the  kind  of  subject 
fit  for  ironwork — noble  in  ironwork,  they  would  have  been 
entirely  ignoble  in  marble,  on  the  grounds  above  stated. 
The  real  plant  of  oleander  standing  in  the  window  en 
riches  the  whole  group  of  lines  very  happily. 

The  other  balcony,  from  a  very  ordinary-looking  house 
in  the  same  street,  is  much  more  interesting  in  its  details. 
It  is  shown  in  the  plate  as  it  appeared  last  summer,  with 
''on volvulus  twined  about  the  bars,  the  arrow-shaped  living 


liECT.  v.]  IN    NATURE,    ART,    AND   POLICY.  175 

leaves  mingled  among  the  leaves  of  iron;  but  you  may 
Bcc  in  the  centre  of  these  real  leaves  a  cluster  of  lightej 
ones,  which  are  those  of  the  ironwork  itself.  This  cluster 
Is  worth  giving  a  little  larger  to  show  its  treatment.  Fig. 
2  (in  Appendix  Y.)  is  the  front  view  of  it :  Fig.  4,  ita 
profile.  It  is  composed  of  a  large  tulip  in  the  centre ;  then 
two  turkscap  lilies ;  then  two  pinks,  a  little  convention- 
alized; then  two  narcissi;  then  two  nondescripts,  or,  at 
least,  flowers  I  do  not  know ;  and  then  two  dark  buds,  and 
a  few  leaves.  I  say,  dark  buds,  for  all  these  flowers  have 
been  coloured  in  their  original  state.  The  plan  of  the 
group  is  exceedingly  simple :  it  is  all  enclosed  in  a  pointed 
arch  (Fig.  3,  Appendix  V.) :  the  large  mass  of  the  tulip 
forming  the  apex ;  a  six-foiled  star  on  each  side ;  then  a 
jagged  star;  then  a  five-foiled  star;  then  an  unjagged  star 
or  rose;  finally  a  small  bud,  so  as  to  establish  relation  and 
cadence  through  the  whole  group.  The  profile  is  very 
free  and  fine,  and  the  upper  bar  of  the  balcony  exceed- 
ingly beautiful  in  effect; — none  the  less  so  on  account  of 
the  marvellously  simple  means  employed.  A  thin  strip  of 
iron  is  bent  over  a  square  rod ;  out  of  the  edge  of  this  strip 
are  cut  a  series  of  triangular  openings — widest  at  top,  leav- 
ing projecting  teeth  of  iron  (Appendix,  Fig.  5) ;  then  each 
of  these  projecting  pieces  gt^ts  a  little  sharp  tap  with  the 
hammer  in  front,  which  beaks  its  edge  inwards,  tearing  it 
a  little  open  at  the  same  time,  and  the  thing  is  done. 
The  common  forms  of  Swiss  ironwork  are  less  naturali» 


176  THE    WORK   OF   IRON,  [LKGT,  V 

tic  thar  these  Italian  balconies,  depending  more  on  beauti- 
ful arrangements  of  various  curve  ;  nevertlieless,  there  has 
been  a  rich  naturalist  school  at  Fribourg,  where  a  few  bell 
handles  are  still  left,  consisting  of  rods  branched  int<: 
laurel  and  other  leafage.  At  Geneva,  modern  improve 
ments  have  left  nothing  ;  but  at  Annecy,  a  little  good  work 
remains;  the  balcony  of  its  old  hotel  de  ville  especially, 
with  a  trout  of  the  lake — presumably  the  town  arms — form- 
ing its  central  ornament. 

I  might  expatiate  all  iiiglit  —if  you  would  sit  and  hear  me 
—on  the  treatment  of  such  required  subject,  or  introduc- 
tion of  pleasant  caprice  by  the  old  workmen  ;  but  we  have 
no  more  time  to  spare,  and  I  must  quit  this  part  of  our 
subject — the  rather  as  I  could  not  explain  to  you  the 
intrinsic  merit  of  such  ironwork  without  going  fully  into 
the  theory  of  curvilinear  design ;  only  let  me  leave  with 
you  this  one  distinct  assertion — that  the  quaint  beauty  and 
character  of  many  natural  objects,  such  as  intricate 
branches,  grass,  foliage  (especially  thorny  branches  and 
prickly  foliage),  as  well  as  that  of  many  animals,  plumed, 
spined,  or  bristled,  is  sculpturally  expressible  in  iron  only, 
and  in  iron  would  be  majestic  and  impressive  in  the  highest 
degree;  and  that  every  piece  of  metal  work  you  use  might 
be,  rightly  treated,  not  only  a  superb  decoration,  but  a  most 
valuable  abstract  of  portions  of  natural  forms,  holding  in 
dignity  precisely  the  same  relation  to  the  painted  represen 
tation  of  plants,  that  a  statue  does  to  the  painted  form  o^ 


LECT.  v.]  IN    NATURE,    ART,    AND    POLICY.  177 

man.  It  is  difficult  to  give  you  an  idea  cf  the  grace  and 
interest  which  the  simplest  objects  possess  when  their  forms 
are  thus  abstracted  from  among  the  surrounding  of  rich 
circumstance  which  in  nature  disturbs  the  feebleness 
cf  our  attention.  In  Plate  2,  a  few  blades  of  com- 
mon green  grass,  and  a  wild  leaf  or  two — ^just  as  they 
were  thrown  by  nature, — are  thus  abstracted  from  the 
associated  redundance  of  the  forms  about  them,  and  shown 
on  a  dark  ground :  every  cluster  of  herbage  would  furnish 
fifty  such  groups,  and  every  such  group  would  work  into 
iron  (fitting  it,  of  course,  rightly  to  its  service)  with  perfect 
ease,  and  endless  grandeur  of  result. 

III.  Iron  in  Policy. — Having  thus  obtained  some  ideu 
of  the  use  of  iron  in  art,  as  dependent  on  its  ductility,  I  need 
not,  certainly,  say  anything  of  its  uses  in  manufacture  and 
commerce ;  we  all  of  us  know  enough, — perhaps  a  little 
too  much — about  them.  So  I  pass  lastly  to  consider  its 
uses  in  policy ;  dependent  chiefly  upon  its  tenacity — that  is 
to  say,  on  its  power  of  bearing  a  pull,  and  receiving  an 
edge.  These  powers,  which  enable  it  to  pierce,  to  bind,  and 
to  smite,  render  it  fit  for  the  three  great  instruments,  by 
which  its  political  action  maybe  simply  typified;  namely, 
tht  Plough,  the  Fetter,  and  the  Sword. 

Oi.  our  understanding  the  right  use  of  these  three  instru 
ments,  depend,  of  course,  all  our  power  as  a  nation,  and  al' 
our  happiness  as  individuals. 

1.  The  Plough. — T  say,  first,  on  our  understaudiug  th« 


'78  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

right  use  of  the  plough,  with  which,  injustice  to  tne  fairesi 
of  our  labourers,  we  must  always  associate  that  feminine 
plough — the  needle.  The  first  requirement  for  the  happi 
ness  of  a  nation  is  that  it  should  understand  the  function  in 
this  world  of  these  two  great  instruments  :  a  happy  nation 
may  be  defined  as  one  in  which  the  husband's  hand  is  on 
the  plough,  and  the  housewife's  on  the  needle;  so  in  due 
time  reaping  its  golden  harvest,  ^nd  shining  in  golden  ves- 
ture: and  an  unhappy  nation  is  one  which,  acknowledging 
110  use  of  plough  nor  needle,  will  assuredly  at  last  find  its 
storehouse  empty  in  the  famine,  and  its  breast  naked  to  the 
cold. 

Perhaps  you  think  this  is  a  mere  truism,  which  I  am 
wasting  your  time  in  repeating,     I  wish  it  were. 

By  far  the  greater  part  of  the  suffering  and  crime  which 
exist  at  this  moment  in  civilized  Europe,  arises  simply 
from  people  not  understanding  this  truism — not  knowing 
that"  produce  or  wealth  is  eternally  connected  by  the  laws 
of  heaven  and  earth  with  resolute  labour ;  but  hoping  in 
some  way  to  cheat  or  abrogate  this  everlasting  law  of  life, 
and  to  feed  where  they  have  not  furrowed,  and  be  warm 
where  they  have  not  woven. 

I  repeat,  nearly  all  our  misery  and  crime  result  from  this 
one  misapprehension.  The  law  of  nature  is,  that  a  certain 
quantity  of  work  is  necessary  to  produce  a  certain  quantity 
of  good,  of  any  kind  whatever.  If  you  want  knowledge,  you 
mu?t  toil  for  it:  if  food,  yon  must  toil  for  it ;  and  if  pleasure 


i-ECT.  V.J  IN    NATURE,    ART,    AND    POLICY.  179 

you  must  tcil  for  it.  But  men  do  not  acknowledge  this 
hyi,  or  strive  to  evade  it,  hoping  to  get  their  knowledge, 
and  food,  and  pleasure  for  nothing  ;  and  in  this  effort  thej 
either  fail  of  getting  them,  and  remain  ignorant  and  mise- 
rable, or  they  obtain  them  by  making  other  men  work  for 
their  benefit ;  and  then  they  are  tyrants  and  robbers.  Yes, 
and  worse  than  robbers.  I  am  not  one  who  in  the  least 
floul)ts  or  disputes  the  progress  of  this  century  in  many 
things  useful  to  mankind ;  but  it  seems  to  me  a  very  dark 
sign  respecting  us  that  we  look  with  so  much  indifference 
upon  dishonesty  and  cruelty  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth.  In 
the  dream  of  Nebuchadnezzar  it  was  only  the  feet  that 
were  part  of  iron  and  part  of  clay ;  but  many  of  us  are 
now  getting  so  cruel  in  our  avarice,  that  it  seems  as  if,  in 
us,  the  heaii  were  part  of  iron,  and  part  of  clay. 

From  what  I  have  heard  of  the  inhabitants  of  this  town, 
I  do  not  doubt  but  that  I  ma}'  be  permitted  to  do  here 
what  I  have  found  it  usually  thought  elsewhere  higldy 
improper  and  absurd  to  do,  namely,  trace  a  few  Bible 
8(!ntences  to  their  practical  result. 

You  cannot  but  have  noticed  how  often  in  those  parts  of 
the  Bible  which  are  likely  to  be  oftenest  opened  wheji 
people  look  for  guidance,  comfort,  or  help  in  the  affairs  of 
daily  life,  namely,  the  Psalms  and  Proverbs,  mention  is 
nuuhi  of  the  guilt  attaching  to  the  Oppression  of  the  poor. 
Observe:  not  the  neglect  of  them,  but  the  Oppression  of 
them :  the  word  is  as  frequent  as  it  is  strange.     You  car 


180  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

hardly  opei  either  of  those  books,  but  somewhere  hi  thoii 
pages  you  will  find  a  description  of  the  wicked  man's 
attempts  against  the  poor :  such  as — "He  doth  ravish  the 
poor  when  he  getteth  him  into  his  net." 

"He  sitteth  in  the  lurking  places  of  the  villages;  his 
eyes  are  privily  set  against  the  poor." 

"In  his  pride  he  doth  persecute  the  poor,  and  blessetli 
the  covetous,  whom  God  abhorreth." 

"  His  moutli  is  full  of  deceit  and  fraud ;  in  the  secret 
places  doth  he  murder  the  innocent.  Have  the  workers  of 
iniquity  no  knowledge,  who  eat  up  my  people  as  thej  eat 
bread?  They  have  drawn  out  the  sword,  and  bent  the 
bow,  to  cast  down  the  poor  and  needy." 

"  They  are  corrupt,  and  speak  wickedly  concerning 
oppression." 

"  Pride  compasseth  them  about  as  a  chain,  and  violence 
as  a  garmrnt." 

"  J^hei\-  poison  is  like  the  poison  of  a  serpent.  Ye  weigh 
the  violence  of  your  hands  in  the  earth." 

Yep  :  "  Ye  weigh  the  violence  of  your  hands  :  " — weigh 
these  words  as  well.  The  last  things  we  ever  usually  think 
of  weighing  are  Bible  words.  We  like  to  dream  and  dis- 
pute over  them ;  but  to  weigh  them,  and  see  what  their 
true  contents  are — anything  but  that.  Yet,  weigh  these ; 
for  I  have  purposely  taken  all  these  verses,  perhaps  more 
striking  to  you  read  in  this  connection,  than  separately  in 
their  places,  out  of  the  Psalms,  because,   for  all  people 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,    AJJT,    AND    POLICY.  18i 

belonging  to  the  Established  Church  of  this  country  these 
Psalms  are  appointed  lessons,  portioned  out  to  them  by 
their  clergy  to  be  read  once  through  every  month.  Pre- 
sumably, therefore,  whatever  portions  of  Scripture  we  may 
pass  by  or  forget,  these  at  all  events,  must  be  brought 
continually  to  our  observance  as  useful  for  direction  of  daily 
life.  Now,  do  we  ever  ask  ourselves  what  the  real  meaning 
of  these  passages  may  be.  and  who  these  wicked  people 
are,  who  are  "murdering  the  innocent?  "  You  know  it  is 
rather  singular  language  this! — rather  strong  language,  we 
might,  perhaps,  call  it — hearing  it  for  the  first  time. 
Murder!  and  murder  of  innocent  people  I — nay,  even  a 
sort  of  cannibalism.  Eating  people, — yes,  and  God's 
people,  too — eating  My  people  as  if  they  were  bread  I 
swords  drawn,  bows  bent,  poison  of  serpents  mixed  I 
violence  of  hands  weighed,  measured,  and  trafficked  witli 
as  so  much  coin !  where  is  all  this  going  on  ?  Do  you  sup 
pose  it  was  only  going  on  in  the  time  of  David,  and.  that 
nobody  but  Jews  ever  murder  the  poor?  If  so,  it  would 
surely  be  wiser  not  to  mutter  and  mumble  for  our  daily 
lessons  what  does  not  concern  us;  but  if  there  be  any 
chance  that  it  may  concern  us,  and  if  this  description,  in 
the  Psalms,  of  human  gailt  is  at  all  generally  applicable,  as 
the  descriptions  in  the  Psalms  of  human  sorrow  are,  ma} 
"t  not  be  advisable  to  know  wherein  this  guilt  is  being  com- 
mitted round  about  us,  or  by  ourselves?  and  when  we  take 
the  words  of  the  Bible  into  our  mouths  in  a  congrcgatiMiiu' 


182  THE    WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

way,  to  be  sure  \Yhether  we  mean  merely  to  chant  a  piece 
of  melodious  poetry  relating  to  other  people — (we  know 
not  exactly  to  whom) — or  to  assert  our  belief  in  facts  bear 
ing  somewhat  stringently  on  ourselves  and  our  daily 
business.  And  if  you  make  up  your  minds  to  do  this  no 
longer,  and  take  pains  to  examine  into  the  matter,  you  will 
find  that  these  strange  words,  occurring  as  they  do,  not  in 
a  few  places  only,  but  almost  in  every  alternate  psalm  and 
every  alternate  chapter  of  proverb,  or  prophecy,  with 
tremendous  reiteration,  were  not  written  for  one  nation  or 
one  time  only ;  but  for  all  nations  and  languages,  for  al] 
places  and  all  centuries ;  and  it  is  as  true  of  the  wicked 
man  now  as  ever  it  was  of  Nabal  or  Dives,  that  "  his  eyea 
are  set  against  the  poor." 

Set  against  the  poor,  mind  you.  Not  merely  set  away 
from  the  poor,  so  as  to  neglect  or  lose  sight  of  them,  but 
set  against,  so  as  to  afflict  and  destroj'-  them.  This  is  the 
main  point  I  want  to  fix  your  attention  upon.  You  will 
often  hear  sermons  about  neglect  or  carelessness  of  the  poor. 
But  neglect  and  carelessness  are  not  at  all  the  points.  The 
Bible  hardly  ever  talks  about  neglect  of  the  poor.  It  always 
talks  of  oppression  of  the  poor — a  very  different  matter.  It 
does  not  merely  speak  of  passing  by  on  the  other  side,  and 
binding  up  no  wounds,  but  of  drawing  the  sword  and  our- 
selves smiting  the  men  down.  It  does  not  charge  us  with 
Vjeing  idle  in  the  pest-house,  and  giving  no  medicine,  but 
with  being  busy  in  the  pest-house,  and  giving  much  poison 


.'.KCT.  v.]  IN    NATURE,    ART,    AND    POLICY.  183 

May  we  not  advisedly  look  into  this  matter  a  little,  even 
lo-nignt,  and  ask  first,  Who  are  these  poor  ? 

No  country  is,  or  ever  will  be,  without  them :  that  is  'X 
day,  without  the  class  which  cannot,  on  the  average,  do 
more  by  its  labour  than  provide  for  its  subsistence,  and 
which  has  no  accumulations  of  property  laid  by  on  any 
considerable  scale.  Now  there  are  a  certain  number  oC 
this  class  wlu>m  we  cannot  oppress  with  much  severity. 
An  able-bodi(Ml  and  intelligent  workman — sober,  honest, 
and  industrious,  will  almost  always  command  a  fair  price 
for  his  woik,  and  lay  by  enough  in  a  few  years  to  enable 
liim  to  hold  his  own  in  the  labour  market.  But  all  men  are 
not  able-bodied,  nor  intelligent,  nor  industrious ;  and  you 
cannot  expect  them  to  be.  Nothing  appears  to  me  at  once 
more  ludicrous  and  more  melancholy  than  the  way  the 
I)eople  of  the  present  age  usually  talk  about  the  morals  of 
l^ibourers.  You  hardly  ever  address  a  labouring  man  upon 
his  prospects  in  life,  without  quietly  assuming  that  he  is  to 
possess,  at  starting,  as  a  small  moral  capital  to  begin  with, 
the  virtue  of  Socrates,  the  philosophy  of  Plato,  and  the 
heroism  of  Epaminondas,  "Be  assured,  my  good  man," 
— ^you  say  to  him, — "  that  if  you  work  steadily  for  ten  houin 
a  day  all  your  life  long,  and  if  you  drink  nothing  but 
water,  or  the  very  mildest  beer,  and  live  on  very  plain 
food,  and  never  lose  youi  temper,  and  go  to  church 
every  Sunday,  and  always  remain  content  in  the  position 
in  which   Piovidence  has  placed  you,  ar.d  nevec  MTumble 


184  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

nor  swear ;  and  always  keep  your  clothes  decent,  a:id  lisc 
early,  and  use  every  opportunity  of  improving  yourself, 
you  will  get  on  very  well,  and  never  come  to  the  parish," 

All  this  is  exceedingly  true  ;  but  before  giving  the  advice 
so  confidently,  it  would  be  well  if  we  sometimes  tried  it 
practically  ourselves,  and  spent  a  year  or  so  at  some  hard 
manual  labour,  not  of  an  entertaining  kind— ploughing  oi 
digging,  for  instance,  with  a  very  moderate  allowance  of 
beer  ;  nothing  but  bread  and  cheese  for  dinner ;  no  papers 
nor  muffins  in  the  morning ;  no  sofas  nor  magazines  at 
night ;  one  small  room  for  parlour  and  kitchen  ;  and  a  large 
family  of  children  always  in  the  middle  of  the  floor.  If 
we  think  we  could,  under  these  circumstances,  enact  Socrates 
or  Epaminondas  entirely  to  our  own  satisfaction,  we  shall 
be  somewhat  justified  in  requiring  the  same  behaviour  from 
our  poorer  neighbours  ;  but  if  not,  we  should  surely  consi- 
der a  little  whether  among  the  various  forms  of  the  oppressioii 
of  the  poor,  we  may  not  rank  as  one  of  the  first  and  likeliest 
■ — the  oppression  of  expecting  too  much  from  them. 

But  let  this  pass ;  and  let  it  be  admitted  that  we  can 
never  be  guilty  of  oppression  towards  the  sober,  industrious, 
intelligent,  exemplary  labourer.  There  will  always  be  in 
the  world  some  who  are  not  altogether  intelligent  and 
exemplary ;  we  shall,  I  believe,  to  the  end  of  time  find  the 
majority  somewhat  unintellige'it,  a  little  inclined  to  be  idle, 
and  occasionally,  on  Saturday  night,  drunk  ;  we  must  even 
be  prepared  to  hear  of  reprobates  who  like  skittles  on  Sunday 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND   POLICY.  185 

morning  better  than  prayers ;  and  of  unnatural  parenta 
who  send  their  children  out  to  beg  instead  of  to  go  to 
school. 

Now  these  are  the  kind  of  people  whom  you  can  oppress, 
and  whom  you  do  oppress,  and  that  to  purpose, — and  with 
all  the  more  cruelty  and  the  greater  sting,  because  it  is  just 
their  own  fault  that  puts  them  into  your  power.  You 
know  the  words  about  wicked  people  are,  "  He  doth  ravish 
the  poor  when  he  getteth  him  into  his  nety  This  getting 
into  the  net  is  constantly  the  fault  or  folly  of  the  sufferer — 
his  own  heedlessness  or  his  own  indolence  ;  but  after  he, is 
once  in  the  net,  the  oppression  of  him,  and  making  the  most 
of  his  distress,  are  ours.  The  nets  which  we  use  against 
the  poor  are  just  those  worldly  embarrassments  which  either 
their  ignorance  or  their  improvidence  are  almost  certain  at 
sometime  or  other  to  bring  them  into:  then,  just  at  the 
Lime  when  we  ought  to  hasten  to  help  them,  and  disentan- 
gle them,  and  teach  them  how  to  manage  better  in  futui-e, 
we  rush  forward  to  pillage  them,  and  force  all  W3  '^an  out 
of  them  in  their  adversity.  For,  to  take  one  insoance  only, 
remember  this  is  literally  and  simjily  what  wc  do,  when- 
ever we  buy,  or  try  to  buy,  cheap  goods — goods  offered  at  a 
price  which  we  know  cannot  be  remunerative  for  the  labour 
involved  in  them.  Whenever  we  buy  such  goods,  remem- 
uer  we  are  stealing  somebody's  labour.  Don't  let  us  mince 
the  matter.  I  say,  in  plain  Saxon,  stealing — taking  from 
him  tne  proper  reward  of  his  work,  and  putting  it  into  ou» 


186  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

own  pocket,  ^ou  know  well  enough  that  the  thing  could 
not  have  been  offered  you  at  that  price,  unless  distress  of 
Bomc  kind  had  forced  the  producer  to  part  with  it.  You 
take  advantage  of  this  distress,  and  you  force  as  much  out 
of  him  as  you  can  under  the  circumstances.  The  old 
barons  of  the  middle  ages  used,  in  general,  the  thumbscrew 
to  extort  property;  we  moderns  use,  in  preference,  hungei, 
or  domestic  affliction :  but  the  fact  of  extortion  remains  pre- 
cisely the  same.  Whether  we  force  the  man's  property 
from  him  by  pinching  his  stomach,  or  pinching  his  fingers, 
makes  some  difference  anatomically ; — morally,  none  what- 
soever :  we  use  a  form  of  torture  of  some  sort  in  order  to 
make  him  give  up  his  property ;  we  use,  indeedj  the  man's 
own  anxieties,  instead  of  the  rack ;  and  his  immediate  peril 
of  starvation,  instead  of  the  pistol  at  the  head ;  but  other- 
wise we  differ  from  Front  de  Bceuf,  or  Dick  Turpin,  merely 
in  being  less  dexterous,  more  cowardly,  and  more  cruel. 
More  cruel,  I  say,  because  the  fierce  baron  and  the  redoubted 
highwayman  are  reported  to  have  robbed,  at  least  by  pre- 
ference, only  the  rich ;  we  steal  habitually  from  the  poor. 
We  buy  our  liveries,  and  gild  our  prayer-books,  with  pil- 
fered pence  out  of  children's  and  sick  men's  wages,  and 
thus  ingeniously  dispose  a  given  quantity  of  Theft,  so  that 
it  may  produce  the  largest  possible  measure  of  delicately- 
distributed  suffering. 

But  this  is  only  one  form  of  common  oppression  of  the 
poor — only  one  way  of  taking  our  hands  oflf  the  plough 


JiEGT.  V  j  IN    NATURE,    ART,    AND    TOLICY.  18't 

handle,  and  binding  another's  upon  it.  This  first  way  of 
doing  it  is  the  economical  way — the  way  preferred  by  pru- 
dent ai>d  virtuous  people.  The  bolder  way  is  the  acquisi 
live  way: — the  way  of  speculation.  You  know  we  are 
considering  at  present  the  various  modes  in  which  a  nation 
corrupts  itself,  by  not  acknowledging  the  eternal  connec- 
tion between  its  plough  and  its  pleasure ; — by  striving  to 
get  pleasure,  without  working  for  it.  Well,  I  say  the  first 
and  commonest  way  of  doing  so  is  to  try  to  get  the  product 
of  other  people's  work,  and  enjoy  it  ourselves,  by  cheapen 
ing  their  labour  in  times  of  distress  ;  then  the  second  way  is 
that  grand  one  of  watching  the  chances  of  the  market ; — 
the  way  of  speculation.  Of  course  there  are  some  specula- 
tions that  are  fair  and  honest — speculations  made  with  our 
own  money,  and  which  do  not  involve  in  their  success  the 
loss,  by  others,  of  what  we  gain.  But  generally  modern 
speculation  involves  much  risk  to  others,  with  chance  of 
profit  only  to  ourselves :  even  in  its  best  conditions  it 
is  merely  one  of  the  forms  of  gambling  or  treasure-hunt- 
ing; it  is  either  leaving  the  steady  plough  and  the 
Bteady  pilgrimage  of  life,  to  look  for  silver  mines  beside 
the  way ;  or  else  it  is  the  full  stop  beside  the  dice- 
tables  in  Vanity  Fair — investing  all  the  thoughts  and  pas- 
pions  of  the  soul  in  the  fall  of  the  cards,  and  choosinjj 
rather  the  wild  accidents  of  idle  fortune  than  the  calm  and 
accumulative  rewards  of  toil.  And  this  is  destructive 
enough,  at  least  to  our  peace  and  virtue.     But  it  is  usuulh 


188  'I'lIK    WORK   OF   IRON,  [.LEfrT.  V 

destructive  of  far  more  than  our  peace,  or  our  virtm;, 
Have  you  ever  delibcrt.telj  set  yourselves  to  imagine  and 
measure  the  suffering,  the  guilt,  and  the  mortality  caused 
necessarily  by  the  failure  of  any  large-dealing  merchant 
or  largely -branched  bank  ?  Take  it  at  the  lowest  possibli 
supposition — count,  at  the  fewest  you  choose,  the  families 
whoso  means  of  support  have  been  involved  in  the  cata- 
strophe. Then,  on  the  morning  after  the  intelligence  of 
ruin,  let  us  go  forth  amongst  them  in  earnest  thought ;  let 
us  use  that  imagination  which  we  waste  so  often  on  ficti- 
tious sorrow,  to  measure  the  stern  facts  of  that  multitudi- 
nous distress ;  strike  open  the  private  doors  of  their  cham- 
bers, and  enter  silently  into  the  midst  of  the  domestic 
misery ;  look  upon  the  old  men,  who  had  reserved  foi 
their  failing  strength  some  remainder  of  rest  in  the  evening- 
tide  of  life,  cast  helplessly  back  into  its  trouble  and  tumult ; 
look  upon  the  active  strength  of  middle  age  suddenly 
blasted  into  incapacity — 'its  hopes  crushed,  and  its  hardly- 
earned  rewards  snatched  away  in  the  same  instant — at  once 
the  heart  withered,  and  the  right  arm  snapped  ;  look  upon 
the  piteous  children,  delicately  nurtured,  whose  soft  eyes, 
now  large  with  wonder  at  their  parents'  grief,  must  soon 
be  set  in  the  dimness  of  famine ;  and,  far  more  than  all 
this,  look  forward  to  the  leagth  of  sorrow  beyond — to  the 
hardest  labour  of  life,  now  to  be  undergone  either  in  all 
the  severity  of  unexpected  and  inexperienced  trial,  or  else, 
more  bitter  still,  to  be  ^cgun  again,  and  endured  for  the 


LEGT.  V^}  IN   NATURE,    ART,   AND   POLIO 3^.  189 

second  time,  amidst  the  ruins  of  cherished  h^pes  and  the 
feebleness  of  advancing  years,  embittered  by  the  continual 
■jting  and  taunt  of  the  inner  feeling  that  it  has  all  been 
!>rought  about,  not  by  the  fair  course  of  appointed  circum- 
atance,  but  by  miserable  chance  and  wanton  treachery; 
and,  last  of  all,  look  beyond  this — to  the  shattered  desti- 
nies of  those  who  have  faltered  under  the  trial,  and  sunk 
past  recovery  to  despair.  And  then  consider  whether  the 
hand  which  has  poured  this  poison  into  all  the  springs  of 
life  be  one  whit  less  guiltily  red  with  human  blood  than 
that  which  literally  pours  the  hemlock  into  the  cup,  or 
guidos  the  dagger  to  the  heart  ?  We  read  with  horror  of 
the  crimes  of  a  Borgia  or  a  Tophana  ;  but  there  never  lived 
Borgias  such  as  live  now  in  the  midst  of  us.  The  cruel 
lady  of  Ferrara  slew  only  in  the  strength  of  passion — she 
slew  only  a  few,  those  who  thwarted  her  purposes  or  who 
vexed  her  soul ;  she  slew  sharply  and  suddenly,  embitter 
ing  the  fate  of  her  victims  with  no  foretastes  of  destruction, 
no  prolongations  of  pain  ;  and,  finally  and  chiefly,  she  slew, 
not  without  remorse,  nor  without  pity.  But  we,  in  no 
storm  of  passion — in  no  blindness  of  wrath, — we,  in  calm 
and  clear  and  untempted  selfishness,  pour  our  poison — not 
for  a  few  only,  but  for  multitudes ; — not  for  those  who 
have  wronged  us,  or  resisted, — but  for  those  who  have 
trusted  us  and  aided  ; — we,  not  with  sudden  gift  of  merciful 
and  unconscious  death,  but  with  slow  waste  of  hunger  and 
weary  rack  of  disappointment  and  despair : — we,  last  and 


i.90  THE    WORK  OF  IRON,  [LECT,  V 

chiefly,  do  our  nuirdering,  not  with  any  pauses  of  pity  oi 
scorching  of  conscience,  but  in  facile  and  forgetful  calm  of 
mind — and  so,  forsooth,  read  day  by  day,  complacentl;^ ,  ar 
if  they  meant  any  one  else  than  ourselves,  the  words  tha*. 
for  ever  describe  the  wicked :  "  The  poison  of  asps  is  under 
their  lips,  and  \hQ\v  feet  are  sunfi  to  shed  hlood^ 

You  may  indeed,  perhaps,  think  there  is  some  excuse  for 
many  in  this  matter,  just  because  the  sin  is  so  unconscious; 
that  the  guilt  is  not  so  great  when  it  is  unapprehended,  and 
that  it  is  much  more  pardonable  to  slay  heedlessly  than 
purposefully.  I  believe  no  feeling  can  be  more  mistaken, 
and  that  in  reality,  and  in  the  sight  of  heaven,  the  callous 
indifference  which  pursues  its  own  interests  at  -any  cost  of 
life,  though  it  does  not  definitely  adopt  the  purpose  of  sin, 
is  a  state  of  mind  at  once  more  heinous  and  more  hopeless 
than  the  wildest  aberrations  of  ungoverned  passion.  There 
may  be,  in  the  last  case,  some  elements  of  good  and  of 
redemption  still  mingled  in  the  character;  but,  in  the  other, 
few  or  none.  There  may  be  hope  for  the  man  who  has 
slain  his  enemy  in  anger ;  hope  even  for  the  man  who  has 
betrayed  his  friend  in  fear ;  but  what  hope  for  hira  who 
trades  in  unregarded  blood,  and  builds  his  fortune  on  un re- 
pented treason  ? 

But,  however  this  may  be,  and  wherever  you  may  ttink 
yourselves  bound  in  justice  to  impute  the  greater  sin,  be 
assured  that  the  question  is  one  of  responsibilities  only,  not 
of  facts.     The  definite  result  of  all  our  modern  haste  to  be 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NATU:iE,    AKT,    AND   TOLICY.  IPl 

rich  is  assuredly,  and  constantly,  tlie  murder  of  a  certain 
number  of  persons  by  our  hands  every  year.  I  have  not 
time  to  go  into  the  details  of  another — on  the  whol-  ^,  the 
broadest  and  terriblest  way  in  which  we  cause  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  poor — namely,  the  way  of  luxury  and  waste, 
destroying,  in  improvidence,  what  might  have  been  the 
support  of  thousands;*  but  if  you  follow  out  the  subject 
for  yourselves  at  home — and  what  I  have  endeavoured  to 
lay  before  you  to-night  will  only  be  useful  to  you  if  you  do 
— you  will  find  that  wherever  and  whenever  men  are  en- 
deavouring to  make  money  hastily^  and  to  avoid  the  labour 
which  Providence  has  appointed  to  be  the  only  source  of 
honourable  profit; — and  also  wherever  and  whenever  they 
permit  themselves  to  spend  it  luxuriously^  without  reflecting 
liow  far  they  are  misguiding  the  labour  of  others ; — there  and 
then,  in  either  case,  they  are  literally  and  infallibly  causing, 
for  their  own  benefit  or  their  own  pleasure,  a  certain  annual 

■•  The  analysis  of  this  error  will  be  found  completely  carried  out  iii 
my  lectures  on  the  political  economy  of  art.  And  it  is  an  ei  roi-  worth 
;malyzing;  for  until  it  is  finally  trodden  under  foot,  no  h(\'iltliy  political 
economical,  or  moral  action  is  possible  in  any  state.  I  do  not  say  th 
impetuously  or  suddenly,  for  I  have  investigated  this  subject  as  deeply, 
and  as  long,  as  my  own  special  subject  of  art;  and  the  principles  of 
political  economy  which  I  have  stated  in  those  lectures  are  as  sure  su 
the  principles  of  Euclid.  Foolish  readers  doubted  their  certainty,  be- 
cause I  told  them  I  hud  "  never  read  any  books  on  Puhtical  lilcouomy,' 
Did  they  "upposr  I  lia<l  ^'ot  my  kmnvlcdge  of  art  by  reading  book,"  } 


192  THE  WOEK  OF  IRON,  [LECT.  T 

n umber  of  human  deaths;  that,  therefore,  the  choice  given 
to  every  man  born  into  this  world  is,  simply,  whether  he 
will  be  a  labourer,  or  an  assassin ;  and  that  whosoever  has 
not  his  hand  on  the  Stilt  of  the  plough,  has  it  on  the  Hilt 
of  the  dagger. 

It  would  also  be  quite  vain  for  me  to  endeavour  to  follow 
out  this  evening  the  lines  of  thought  which  would  be  sug- 
gested by  the  other  two  great  political  uses  of  iron  in  the 
Fetter  and  the  Sword:  a  few  words  only  I  must  permit 
myself  respecting  both. 

2.  The  Fetter. — As  the  plough  is  the  typical  instru- 
ment of  industry,  so  the  fetter  is  the  typical  instrument  of 
the  restraint  or  subjection  necessary  in  a  nation— either 
literally,  for  its  evil-doers,  or  figuratively,  in  accepted  laws, 
for  its  wise  and  good  men.  You  have  to  choose  between 
this  figurative  and  literal  use;  for  depend  upon  it,  the 
more  laws  you  accept,  the  fewer  penalties  you  will  have  to 
endure,  and  the  fewer  punishments  to  enforce.  For  wise 
laws  and  just  restraints  are  to  a  noble  nation  not  chains, 
but  chain  mail — strength  and  defence,  though  something 
also  of  an  incumbrance.  And  this  necessity  of  restraint, 
remember,  is  just  as  honourable  to  man  as  the  necessity  of 
labour.  You  hear  every  day  greater  numbers  of  foolish 
people  speaking  about  liberty,  as  if  it  were  such  an 
honourable  thing:  so  far  from  being  that,  it  is,  on  the 
whole,  and  in  the  broadest  sense,  dishonourable,  and  an 
; attribute  of  the  lower  creatures.     No  human  being,  hov* 


LECT.  V.J  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND    TOLICY.  193 

ever  great  or  powerful,  was  ever  so  free  as  a  fish.  There 
is  always  something  that  he  must,  or  must  not  do ;  while 
the  fish  may  do  whatever  he  likes.  All  the  kingdoms  of 
tlie  world  put  together  are  not  half  so  large  as  the  sea,  and 
all  the  railroads  and  wheels  that  ever  were,  or  will  be,  in- 
vented are  not  so  easy  as  fins.  You  will  find,  on  fairly 
thinking  of  it,  that  it  is  his  Eestraint  which  is  honourable 
to  man,  not  his  Liberty ;  and,  what  is  more,  it  is  restraint 
which  is  honourable  even  in  the  lower  animals.  A  butterfly 
is  much  more  free  than  a  bee;  but  you  honour  the  bee 
more,  just  because  it  is  subject  to  certain  laws  which  fit  it 
for  orderly  function  in  bee  society.  And  throughout  the 
world,  of  the  two  abstract  things,  liberty  and  restraint, 
restraint  is  always  the  more  honourable.  It  is  true,  indeed, 
that  in  these  and  all  other  matters  you  never  can  reason 
finally  from  the  abstraction,  for  both  liberty  and  restraint 
are  good  when  they  are  nobly  chosen,  and  both  are  bad 
when  they  are  basely  chosen ;  but  of  the  two,  I  repeat,  it 
is  restraint  which  characterizes  the  higher  creature,  and 
betters  the  lower  creature :  and,  from  the  ministering  of 
the  archangel  to  the  labour  of  the  insect, — from  the  pois- 
ing of  the  planets  to  the  gravitation  of  a  grain  of  dust, — • 
the  power  and  glory  of  all  creatures,  and  all  matter,  consist 
in  their  obedience,  not  in  their  freedom.  The  Sun  has  no 
liberty — a  dead  leaf  has  much.  The  dust  of  which  you 
are  formed  has  no  liberty.  Its  liberty  will  come — with  its 
corruption. 

9 


194  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V. 

And,  therefore,  I  say  bolcll}^,  though  it  seems  a  strange 
thing  to  say  in  England,  that  as  the  first  power  of  a  nation 
consists  in  knowing  how  to  guide  the  Plough,  its  second 
power  consists  in  knowing  how  to  wear  the  Fetter : — 

3.  The  Sword. — And  its  third  power,  which  perfects  it 
as  a  nation,  consists  in  knowing  how  to  wield  the  sword,  so 
that  the  three  talismans  of  national  existence  are  expressed 
in  these  three  short  words — Labour,  Law,  and  Courage. 

This  last  virtue  we  at  least  possess ;  and  all  that  is  to  be 
alleged  against  us  is  that  we  do  not  honour  it  enough.  I 
do  not  mean  honour  by  acknowledgment  of  service,  though 
sometimes  we  are  slow  in  doing  even  tliat.  But  we  do  not 
honour  it  enough  in  consistent  regard  to  the  lives  and  souls 
of  our  soldiers.  How  wantonly  we  have  wasted  their  lives 
you  have  seen  lately  in  the  reports  of  their  mortality  by  dis 
ease,  which  a  little  care  and  science  might  have  prevented, 
but  we  regard  their  souls  less  than  their  lives,  by  keeping 
them  in  ignorance  and  idleness,  and  regarding  them  merely 
as  instruments  of  battle.  The  argument  brought  forward 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  standing  army  usually  refers  only 
to  expediency  in  the  case  of  unexpected  war,  whereas,  one 
of  the  chief  reasons  for  the  maintenance  of  an  army  is  the 
advantage  of  the  military  system  as  a  method  of  education 
The  most  fiery  and  headstrong,  who  are  often  also  the  most 
gifted  and  generous  of  your  youths,  have  always  a  tenden 
cy  both  m  the  lower  and  upper  classes  to  offer  themselvea 
for  your  soldiers :  others,  weak  and  unserviceable  in  a  civil 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND   POLICY.  195 

oapacity^  are  tempted  or  entrapped  into  the  army  in  a  for 
tunate  hour  for  them :  out  of  this  fiery  or  uncouth  material, 
it  is  only  soldier's  discipline  which  can  bring  the  full  value 
and  power.  Even  at  present,  by  mere  force  of  order  and 
authority,  the  army  is  the  salvation  of  myriads ;  and  men 
who,  under  other  circumstances,  would  have  sunk  into 
lethargy  or  dissipation,  are  redeemed  into  noble  life  by  a 
service  which  at  once  summons  and  directs  their  energies. 
How  much  more  than  this  military  education  is  capable  of 
doing,  you  will  find  only  when  you  make  it  education 
indeed.  We  have  no  excuse  for  leaving  our  private  soldiers 
at  their  present  level  of  ignorance  and  want  of  refinement, 
for  we  shall  invariably  find  that,  both  among  officers  and 
men,  the  gentlest  and  best  informed  are  the  bravest ;  still 
less  have  we  excuse  for  diminishing  our  army,  either  in  the 
present  state  of  political  events,  or,  as  I  believe,  in  any 
other  conjunction  of  them  that  for  many  a  year  will  be 
possible  in  this  world. 

You  may,  perhaps,  be  surprised  at  my  saying  this ;  per- 
Iiaps  surprised  at  my  implying  that  war  itself  can  be  right, 
or  necessary,  or  noble  at  all.  Nor  do  I  speak  of  all  war  as 
necessary,  nor  of  all  war  as  noble.  Both  peace  and  war  are 
noble  or  ignoble  according  to  their  kind  and  occasion.  No 
man  has  a  })rofounder  sense  of  the  horror  and  guilt  of 
ignoble  war  than  I  have :  I  have  personally  seen  its  effects, 
upon  nations,  of  unmitigated  evil,  on  soul  and  body,  with 
perhaps  as  much  pity,  and  as  niucli  bitterness  of  indigna 


196  THE   WORK   OF   IRON,  [LECT.  V 

tion,  rts  anj?  of  those  whom  you  will  hear  continually 
declaiming  in  the  cause  of  peace.  But  peace  may  be  sought 
in  two  ways.  One  way  is  as  Gideon  sought  it,  when  he 
built  his  altar  in  Ophrah,  naming  it,  "  God  send  peace," 
yet  sought  this  peace  that  he  loved,  as  he  was  ordered  to 
seek  it,  and  the  peace  was  sent,  in  God's  way : — "  the 
country  was  in  quietness  forty  years  in  the  days  of  Gide- 
on." And  the  other  way  of  seeking  peace  is  as  Menahem 
sought  it  when  he  gave  the  King  of  Assyria  a  thousand 
talents  of  silver,  that  "  his  hand  might  be  with  him."  That 
is,  you  may  either  win  your  peace,  or  buy  it : — win  it,  by 
resistance  to  evil ; — buy  it,  by  compromise  with  evil.  You 
may  buy  your  peace,  with  silenced  consciences ;::— you  may 
buy  it,  with  broken  vows,- — buy  it,  with  lying  words, — buy 
it,  with  base  connivances, — buy  it,  with  the  blood  of  the 
slain,  and  the  cry  of  the  captive,  and  the  silence  of  lost 
souls — over  hemispheres  of  the  earth,  while  you  sit  smiling 
at  your  serene  hearths,  lisping  comfortable  prayers  evening 
and  morning,  and  counting  your  pretty  Protestant  beads 
(which  are  flat,  and  of  gold,  instead  of  round,  and  of  ebony, 
[\s  the  monks'  ones  were),  and  so  mutter  continually  to  your- 
Kclves,  "  Peace,  peace,"  when  there  is  No  peace ;  but  only 
captivity  and  death,  for  you,  as  well  as  for  those  you  leave 
unsaved ; — and  yours  darker  than  theirs. 

I  cannot  utter  to  you  what  I  would  in  this  matter ;  we 
■dl  see  too  dimly,  as  yet,  what  our  great  world-duties  are,  tc 
dlow  any  of  us  to  try  to  outline  their  enlarging  shadows 


LECT.  v.]  IN   NATURE,    ART,    AND   POLICY.  1^7 

But  think  over  what  I  have  said,  and  as  you  return  to  your 
quiet  homes  to-night,  reflect  that  their  peace  was  not  won 
for  you  by  your  own  hands ;  but  by  theirs  who  long  ago 
jeoparded  their  lives  for  you,  their  children  ;  and  remember 
that  neither  this  inherited  peace,  nor  any  other,  can  be  kept, 
but  through  the  same  jeopardy.  No  peace  was  ever  won 
from  Fate  by  subterfuge  or  agreement ;  no  peace  is  ever  in 
store  for  any  of  us,  but  that  which  we  shall  win  by  victory 
over  shame  or  sin ; — victory  over  the  sin  that  oppresses,  as 
well  as  over  that  which  corrupts.  For  many  a  year  to 
come,  the  sword  of  every  righteous  nation  must  be  whet 
ted  to  save  or  to  suodue ;  nor  win  it  be  by  patience  of 
others'  suffering,  but  by  the  offering  of  your  own,  that  you 
will  ever  draw  nearer  to  the  time  when  the  great  change 
shall  pass  upon  the  iron  of  the  earth : — when  men  shall  beat 
their  swords  into  ploughshares,  and  their  spears  into  prim- 
ing-hooks ;  neither  shall  they  learn  war  any  more. 


ilPPENDICES. 


APPENDIX  L 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG. 

[Readers  who  are  using  my  "  Elements  of  Drawing"  may  be  surprised 
by  my  saying  here  that  Tintoret  may  lead  them  wrong ;  while  in 
the  "  Elements,"  he  is  one  of  the  six  men  named  as  being  "  always 
right." 

I  bring  the  apparent  inconsistency  foward  at  the  beginning  of  this 
Appendix,  because  tlie  illustration  of  it  will  be  farther  useful  in  show- 
ing the  real  nature  of  the  self-contradiction  which  is  often  alleged 
against  me  by  careless  readers. 

It  is  not  only  possible,  but  a  frequent  condition  of  human  action,  to 
do  right  and  he  right — ^yet  so  as  to  mislead  other  people  if  they  rashly 
miitate  the  thing  done.  For  there  are  many  rights  which  are  not 
absolutely,  but  relatively  -ight — right  only  for  that  person  to  do  under 
those  circumstances, — n<.t  for  this  person  to  do  under  other  circum- 
stances. 

Thus  it  stands  between  Titian  and  Tintoret,  Titian  is  always  abso- 
lutely Right.  You  may  imitate  him  with  entire  security  that  you  are 
doing  the  best  thing  that  can  possibly  be  done  for  the  purpose  in  hand. 
Tintoret  is  always  relatively  Right — relatively  to  his  own  aims  and  pe- 
cjliar  powers.  But  you  must  quite  understand  Tintoret  before  yoi: 
can  be  sure  what  his  aim  was,  and  why  he  was  then  right  in  dojug 
what  would  not  be  right  always.  If,  however,  you  take  the  pains  thus 
to  understand  him,  he  becomes  entirely  instructive  and  exemplaiy,  just 
as  Titian  is  •  and  therefore  I  have  placed  him  among  those  v*  ho  are 
''always  rignt,"  and  you  can  only  study  him  rightly  with  tha'  rcv"*" 
*nce  for  him. 

9* 


202  APPENDICES. 

Tlien  the  artists  who  are  named  as  "admitting question  of  right  and 
wrong,"  are  those  who  from  some  mischance  of  circumstance  or  sliort- 
ooming  in  their  education,  do  not  always  do  right,  even  with  relation 
to  their  own  aims  and  powers. 

Take  for  example  the  quality  of  imperfection  in  drawing  form 
There  are  many  pictures  of  Tintoret  in  which  the  trees  are  drawn  with 
a  few  curved  flourishes  of  the  brush  instead  of  leaves.  That  is  (abso- 
lutely) wrong.  If  you  copied  the  tree  as  a  model,  you  would  be  going 
very  wrong  indeed.  But  it  is  relatively,  and  for  Tintoret's  purposes, 
right.  In  the  nature  of  the  superficial  work  you  will  find  there  must 
have  been  a  cause  for  it.  Somebody  perhaps  wanted  the  picture  in  a 
hurry  to  fill  a  dark  corner.  Tintoret  good-naturedly  did  all  he  could — 
painted  the  figures  tolerably — had  five  minutes  left  only  for  the  trees, 
when  the  servant  came.  "  Let  him  wait  another  five  minutes."  And 
this  is  the  best  foliage  we  can  do  in  the  time.  Entirely,  admirably, 
unsurpassably  right,  under  the  conditions.  Titian  would  not  have 
worked  under  tliem,  but  Tintoret  was  kinder  and  humbler;  yet  he 
may  lead  you  wrong  if  you  don't  understand  him.  Or,  perhaps,  ap- 
other  day,  somebody  came  in  while  Tmtoret  was .  at  work,  who  tor- 
mented Tintoret.  An  ignoble  person !  Titian  would  have  been 
polite  to  him,  and  gone  on  steadily  with  his  trees.  Tintoret  cannot 
stand  the  ignobleness  ;  it  is  unendurably  repulsive  and  discomfiting  to 
him.  "  The  Black  Plague  take  him — and  the  trees,  too !  Shall  such  a 
fellow  see  me  paint!"  And  the  trees  go  all  to  pieces.  This,  in  you, 
would  be  mere  ill-breeding  and  ill-temper.  In  Tintoret  it  was  one  of 
the  necessary  conditions  of  his  intensesiMisibility ;  had  he  been  capable, 
then,  of  keeping  his  temper,  he  could  never  have  done  his  greatest 
works.  Let  the  trees  go  to  pieces,  by  all  means  ;  it  is  quite  light  they 
should ;  he  is  always  right 

But  in  a  background  of  Grainsborough  you  would  find  the  trees 
unjustifiably  gone  to  pieces.  The  carelessness  of  form  there  is  defi- 
nitely purposed  by  him  ; — adopted  as  an  advisable  thing ;  and  therefore 
it  is  both  absolutely  and  relatively  wrong: — it  indicates  his  being 
imperfectly  educated  as  a  painter,  and  not  having  brought  out  all  hi? 
powers.  It  may  still  happen  that  the  man  whose  work  is  thus  parti.'illy 
erroneous  is  greater  far,  than  others  who  have  fewer  faults.  Gains- 
borough's  and   Reynolds'    wrongs   are  more   charming   than    almost 


APPENDIX  1.  203 

Rtiybody  else's  right.  Still,  they  occasionally  are  wrong-  -but  the 
Venetians  and  Velasquez,*  never. 

I  ought,  perhaps,  to  have  added  in  that  Manchester  address  (only 
one  does  not  hke  to  say  things  that  shock  people)  some  words  of  wart- 
ing  against  painters  likely  to  mislead  the  student.  For  indeed,  though 
!ierc  and  there  something  may  be  gained  by  looking  at  inferior  men, 
there  is  always  more  to  be  gained  by  looking  at  the  best;  and  there  \a 
not  time,  with  all  the  looking  of  human  life,  to  exhaust  even  one  great 
painter's  instruction.  How  then  shall  we  dare  to  waste  our  sight  and 
thoughts  on  inferior  ones,  even  if  we  could  do  so,  which  we  rarely  can, 
without  danger  of  being  led  astray  ?  Nay,  strictly  speaking,  what 
{leople  call  inferior  painters  are  in  general  no  painters.  Artists  are 
divided  by  an  impassable  gulf  into  the  men  who  can  paint,  and  who 
cannot.  The  men  who  can  paint  often  fall  short  of  what  they  should 
have  dune ; — are  repressed,  or  defeated,  or  otherwise  rendered  inferior 
one  to  another:  still  there  is  an  everlasting  barrier  between  them  and 
the  men  who  cannot  paint — who  can  only  in  various  popular  ways 
pretend  to  paint.  And  if  once  you  know  the  difference,  there  is  always 
some  good  to  be  got  by  looking  at  a  real  painter — seldom  anything  but 
mischief  to  be  got  out  of  a  false  one ;  but  do  not  suppose  real  painters 
are  common.  I  do  not  speak  of  living  men ;  but  among  those  who 
labour  no  more,  in  this  England  of  ours,  since  it  first  had  a  school,  we 
liave  had  (mly  five  real  painters ; — Reynolds,  Gainsborough,  Hogarth. 
Richard  Wilson,  and  Turner. 

The  reader  may,  perhaps,  think  I  have  forgotten  Wilkic.  No.  I 
once  much  overrated  him  as  an  expressional  draughtsman,  not  having 
then  .studied  the  figure  long  enough  to  be  able  to  detect  superficial 
sentiment.  But  his  colour  T  have  never  praised  ;  it  is  entirely  false  and 
valueless.  And  it  would  be  unjust  to  English  art  if  I  did  not  heie 
express  ray  regret  that  the  admiration  of  Constable,  already  harmful 
enough  in  England,  is  extending  even  into  France.  There  was,  p(>r- 
haps,  the  making,  in  Constable,  of  a  second  or  third-rate  painter,  if 
any  careful  discipline  had  developed  in  him  the  instincts  which,  though 
unparalleled  for  narrowness,  were,  as  far  as  they  went,  true.     But  as  it 

*  At  least  after  his  styls  was  forraed;  early  pictures,  lilfle  the  Adoratioi 

o)  the  Magi  ia  our  Gallerj^   are  of  little  value, 


204  APPENDICES, 

is,  .le  is  nothing  more  than  an  industrious  and  innocent  ainateui 
blundering  his  way  to  a  superficial  expression  of  one  or  two  populai 
aspects  of  common  nature. 

And  my  readers  may  depend  upon  it,  that  all  blame  which  I  express 
in  this  sweeping  way  is  trustworthy.  I  have  often  had  to  repent  of 
over-praise  of  inferior  men;  and  continually  to  repent  of  insufficient 
praise  of  great  men ;  but  of  broad  condemnation,  never.  For  I  Jo 
not  speak  it  but  after  the  most  searching  examination  of  the  matter, 
and  under  stern  sense  of  need  for  it :  so  that  whenever  the  reader  is 
entirely  shocked  by  what  I  say,  he  may  be  assured  every  word  i?  true.* 
It  is  just  because  it  so  much  offends  him,  that  it  was  necessary :  and 
knowing  that  it  must  offend  him,  I  should  not  have  ventured  to  say  it, 
without  certainty  of  its  truth.  I  say  "certainty,"  for  it  is  just  as 
possible  to  be  certain  whether  the  drawing  of  a  tree  or  a  stone  is  true 
or  false,  as  whether  the  drawing  of  a  triangle  is ;  and  what  I  mean 
primarily  by  saying  that  a  picture  is  in  all  respects  worthless,  is  that  it 
is  in  all  respects  False  :  which  is  not  a  matter  of  opinion  at  all,  but  a 
matter  of  ascertainable  fact,  such  as  I  never  assert  till  I  have  ascertained 
And  the  thing  so  commonly  said  about  my  Avritings,  that  they  are 
rather  persuasive  than  just;  and  that  though  my  "language  "  may  be 
good,  I  am  an  unsafe  guide  in  art  criticism,  is,  like  many  other  populai 
estimates  in  such  matters,  not  merely  untrue,  but  precisely  the  reverse 
of  the  truth ;  it  is  truth,  hke  reflections  in  water,  distorted  much  by 
the  shaking  receptive  surface,  and  in  every  particular,  upside  down. 
For  my  "  language,"  until  within  the  last  six  or  seven  years,  was  loose, 
obscure,  and  more  or  less  feeble ;  and  still,  though  I  have  tried  hard  to 
mend  it,  the  best  I  can  do  is  inferior  to  much  contemporary  work.  No 
description  that  I  have  ever  given  of  anything  is. worth  four  lines  of 
Tennyson ;  and  in  serious  thought,  my  half-pages  are  generally  only 
worth  about  as  much  as  a  single  sentence  either  of  his,  or  of  Carlyle's. 
They  are,  I  well  trust,  as  true  and  necessary ;  but  they  are  neither  so 

*  He  must,  however,  be  careful  to  distinguish  blame — however  strongly 
expressed,  of  some  special  fault  or  error  in  a  true  painter, — from  these  genera] 
statements  of  inferiority  or  worthlessncss.  Thus  he  will  find  me  continually 
iaughing  at  Wilson's  tree-painting;  not  because  Wilson  could  not  paint,  bul 
because  he  had  never  looked  at  a  tree. 


APPENDIX  I.  205 

Donoentrated  nor  so  well  put.  But  I  am  an  entirely  safe  guide  in  art 
judgment :  and  that  simply  as  the  necessary  result  of  my  having  given 
the  labour  of  life  to  the  determination  of  facts,  rather  than  to  the  Ibllow- 
ing  of  feelings  or  theories.  Not,  indeed,  that  my  work  is  free  from 
mistakes ;  it  admits  many,  and  always  must  admit  many,  from  its 
scattered  range ;  but,  in  the  long  run,  it  will  be  found  to  enter  sternly 
and  searchingly  into  the  nature  of  what  it  deals  with,  and  the  kind  ol 
mistake  it  admits  is  never  dangerous — consisting,  usually,  in  jiressing 
the  truth  too  far.  It  is  quite  easy,  for  instance,  to  take  an  accidental 
irregularity  in  a  piece  of  architecture,  which  less  careful  examination 
would  never  have  detected  at  all,  for  an  intentional  irregularity  ;  quite 
possible  to  misinterpret  an  obscure  passage  in  a  picture,  which  a  less 
earnest  observer  would  never  have  tried  to  interpret.  But  mistakes 
of  this  kind — honest,  enthusiastic  mistakes — are  never  harmful ;  because 
they  are  always  made  in  a  true  direction, — falls  forward  on  the  road, 
not  into  the  ditch  beside  it ;  and  they  are  sure  to  be  corrected  by  the 
next  comer.  But  the  blunt  and  dead  mistakes  made  by  too  many  otJiei 
writers  on  art — the  mistakes  of  sheer  inattention,  and  want  of  sym- 
fiathy — are  mortal.  The  entire  purpose  of  a  great  thinker  may  be 
difficult  to  fathom,  and  we  may  be  over  and  over  again  more  or  less 
mistaken  in  guessing  at  his  meaning ;  but  the  real,  profound,  nay,  quite 
bottomless,  and  unredeemable  mistake,  is  the  fool's  thought — that  he 
liad  no  meaning. 

I  do  not  refer,  in  saying  this,  to  any  of  my  statements  respecting 
subjects  which  it  has  been  my  main  work  to  study :  as  far  as  I  am 
aware,  I  have  never  yet  misinterpreted  any  picture  of  Turner's,  though 
:)flen  renraining  blind  t,o  the  half  of  what  he  had  intended:  neither 
have  I  as  yet  found  anything  to  correct  in  my  statements  respecting 
Venetian  architecture;*  but  in  casual  references  to  what  has  been 
fjuickly  seen,  it  is  impossible  to  guard  wholly  against  error,  without 
Icsnig  much  valuable  observation,  true  in  ninety-nine  cases  o«t  of  a 
hundred,  and  harmless  even  when  erroneous. 

*  The  subtle  proportions  of  the  Byzantine  Palaces,  given  in  precise  measuro- 
tuents  in  the  second  volumo  of  the  "Stones  <)f  Vcuicc,"  wore  alleged  by 
architects  to  bo  accidental  irref^fularitics.  They  will  bo  found,  by  every  one  wlic 
will  take  the  pains  to  examino  tliem,  mo.st  assuredly  and  iiidi.spul,al)ly  inlen 
tiuiml,— and  not  only  so,  but  one  of  tlie  principal  subjects  of  tho  designer's  care 


?06  APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  11. 


REYNOLDS'  DISAPPOINTMENT. 

It  is  ve^y  fbrtunate  that  in  tne  fragment  of  Mason's  MSS.,  published 
lately  by  Mr.  Cotton  in  his  "  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'  Notes,"*  record 
is  preserved  of  Sir  Joshua's  feelings  respecting  the  paintings  in  the 
window  of  New  College,  which  might  otherwise  have  been  supposed 
to  give  his  full  sanction  to  this  mode  of  painting  on  glass.  Nothing 
can  possibly  be  more  curious,  to  my  mind,  than  the  great  painter's  ex- 
pectations ;  or  his  having  at  all  entertained  the  idea  that  the  qualities 
of  colour  which  are  pecuUar  to  opaque  bodies  could  be  obtained  in  a 
transparent  medium ;  but  so  it  is :  and  with  the  simplicity  and  hum- 
bleness of  an  entirely  great  man  he  hopes  that  Mr.  Jervas  on  glass  is 
to  excel  Sir  Joshua  on  canvas.     Happily,  Mason  tells  us  the  result. 

"  With  the  copy  Jervas  made  of  this  picture  he  was  grievously  dis- 
appointed. '  I  had  frequently,'  he  said  to  me,  '  pleased  myself  by  reflect- 
ing, after  I  had  produced  what  I  thought  a  brilliant  effect  of  light  and 
shadow  on  my  canvas,  how  greatly  that  effect  would  be  heightened  by 
tho  transparency  which  the  painting  on  glass  would  be  sure  to  produce 
It  turned  out  quite  the  reverse.'  " 

*  Smith,  Soho  Square,  1869 


APPENDIX  III. 


207 


APPENDIX  IIL 


CLASSICAL  ARCHITECTURE. 

This  passage  in  tlie  lecture  was  illustrated  by  an  enlargement  of  ine 
woodcut,  fig.  1 ,  but  I  did  not  choose  to  disfigure  the  middle  of  tiiis 


Fig.  1. 


book  with  it.  It  is  copied  from  the  49th  plate  of  the  third  edition  of 
the  "  Encyclopaidia  Britannica"  (Edinburgh,  1797),  and  represents  an 
English  farmhouse  a'ranged  on  classical  principles.  If  tlie  reader  cares 
to  consult  the  work  itself,  he  will  find  in  the  same  plate  another  com- 
position of  similar  propriety,  and  dignified  by  the  addition  of  a  pedi- 
ment, beneath  the  shadow  of  which  "  a  private  gentleman  who  has  a 
small  family  may  find  con  veniency." 


208  Al'PENDICES. 


APPENDIX  IV 


SUBTLETY  OF  HAND. 

I  HAD  intended  in  one  or  other  of  these  lectures  to  have  spcken  ai 
Borae  length  of  the  quality  of  refinement  in  Colour,  cat  found  the  sub- 
ject would  lead  me  too  far.  A  few  words  are,  however,  necessary  in 
order  to  explain  some  expressions  in  the  text. 

"  Eefinement  in  colour  "  is  indeed  a  tautological  expression,  for 
colour,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  does  not  exist  until  it  is  refined. 
Dirt  exists, — stains  exist, — and  pigments  exist,  easily  enough  in  all 
places ;  and  are  laid  on  easily  enough  by  all  hands ;  but  colour  exists 
only  where  there  is  tenderness,  and  can  be  laid  on  only  by  a  hand 
which  has  strong  life  in  it.  The  law  conceining  colour  is  very  strange, 
very  noble,  in  some  sense  almost  awful.  In  every  given  touch  laid  on 
canvas,  if  one  grain  of  the  colour  is  inoperative,  and  does  not  take  its 
full  part  in  producing  the  hue,  the  hue  will  be  imperfect.  The  grain  of 
colour  which  does  not  work  is  dead.  It  infects  all  about  it  with  its 
death.  It  must  be  got  quit  of,  or  the  touch  is  spoiled.  We  acknow- 
ledge this  instinctively  in  our  use  of  the  phrases  "dead  color,"  "killed 
colour,"  "  foul  colour."  Those  words  are,  in  some  sort,  hterally  true. 
If  more  colour  is  put  on  than  is  necessary,  a  heavy  touch  when  a  light 
one  would  have  been  enough,  the  quantity  of  colour  that  was  noi 
wanted,  and  is  oa  erlaid  by  the  rest,  is  as  dead,  and  it  pollutes  the  rest. 
There  will  be  no  good  in  the  touch. 

The  art  of  painting,  properly  so  called,  consists  in  laying  on  the  least 
Dossible  colour  that  Avill  produce  the  required  result,  and  this  measure- 
ment, in  all  the  ultimate,  that  is  to  say,  the  principal,  operations  of 
colouring,  is  so  delicate  that  not  one  human  hand  in  a  million  has  the 
required  lightness.  The  final  touch  of  any  painter  prope  -ly  so  named, 
of  Correggio — Titian — Turner — or  Reynolds — would  Ve  always  quit* 


APPENDIX  IV.  209 

invi.siV)Ie  to  any  one  watching  the  progress  of  the  work,  the  fihns  ol 
hue  being  laid  thinnef-  than  tlie  depths  of  the  grooves  in  mother-of- 
pearL  The  work  may  be  swii't,  apparently  careless,  nay,  to  the  paintei 
himself  almost  unconscious.  Great  painters  are  so  organized  that  the} 
dc  their  best  Avork  Avitl.out  effort;  but  analyze  the  touches  afterwards 
and  you  wih  find  the  structure  and  depth  of  the  colour  laid  mathe- 
matically demonstrable  to  be  of  literally  inlinite  fineness,  the  last  touoii- 
i^s  passing  away  at  their  edges  by  untraceable  gradation.  The  very 
essence  of  a  master's  work  may  thus  be  removed  by  a  picture-cleaner 
in  ten  minutes. 

Observe,  however,  this  thinness  exists  only  in  portions  of  the  ulti- 
mate touches,  for  wdiich  the  preparation  may  often  have  been  made 
with  solid  colours,  commonly,  and  literally,  called  "dead  colouring," 
but  even  that  is  always  subtle  if  a  master  lays  it — subtle  at  least  in 
diawnig,  if  simple  in  hue;  and  farther,  observe  that  the  lefinenient  of 
work  consists  not  in  laying  absolutely  littJe  colour,  but  in  always  laying 
[)i-ecisely  the  right  quantity.  To  lay  on  little  needs  indeed  the  I'are 
lightness  of  hand  ;  but  to  lay  much, — yet  not  one  atom  too  much,  and 
obtain  subtlety,  not  by  withholding  strength,  but  by  precision  of  pause, 
— that  is  the  master's  final  sign-manual — power,  knowledge,  and  ten 
derness  all  united.  A  great  deal  of  colour  may  often  be  wanted  ;  per- 
haps quite  a  mass  of  it,  such  as  shall  project  from  the  canvas ;  but  the 
real  painter  lays  this  mass  of  its  required  thickness  and  shape  with  as 
much  precision  as  if  it  were  a  bud  of  a  flower  which  lie  had  to  touch 
into  blossom  ;  one  of  Turner's  loaded  fragments  of  white  cloud  ismo- 
i]ell(,'d  and  gradated  in  an  instant,  as  if  it  aloue  were  tlie  subject  of  the 
pictiire,  when  the  same  quantity  of  colour,  under  another  hand,  would 
he  a  lifeless  lump. 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  in  the  Literary  Gazette  of  13th 
November,  1858^  .vhlch  I  was  obliged  to  write  to  defend  a  questioned 
expression  respecting  Turner's  subtlety  of  hand  from  a  charge  of  hy- 
p*^rbole,  contains  some  interesting  and  conclusive  evidence  on  the  point 
tnoi-gh  it  refers  to  pencil  and  chalk  drawing  only  : — 

'I  must  afek  you  to  allow  me  yet  leave  to  reply  to  the  objections 
jow  make  to  two  statements  in  my  catalogue,  as  those  objections  would 
otherwise  diminish  its  usefulness.  I  have  asserted  that,  in  a  given 
li'awing  (uamcd  as  one  of  the  chief  in  the  series),  Turner's  penoil  did 


210  APPEMDK'ES. 

not  move  over  the  thousandth  of  an  inch  without  meaning;  and  you 
charge  this  expression  with  extravagant  hyperbole.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  much  within  tlie  truth,  being  merely  a  mathematically  accurate 
desf.i'iption  of  fairly  good  execution  in  either  drawing  or  engraving.  It 
'S  only  nejessary  to  measure  a  piece  of  any  ordinary  good  work  to  ascer- 
tain this.  Take,  for  instance,  Finden's  engraving  at  the  180th  page  of 
Rogers'  poems ;  in  wliicli  the  face  of  the  figure,  from  the  chin  to  the  top 
of  the  brew,  occnqjies  just  a  quarter  of  an  inch,  and  the  space  between 
the  upper  lip  and  chin  as  nsarly  as  possible  one-seventeenth  of  an  incli. 
The  whole  mouth  occupies  one-third  of  this  space,  say  one-fiftieth  of 
an  inch,  and  within  that  space  botli  the  hps  and  the  nmch  more  dilfi- 
cult  inner  corner  of  the  mouth  are  perfectly  drawn  and  rounded,  with 
quite  successful  and  sufiiciently  subtle  expression.  Any  artist  will 
assure  you  that  in  order  to  draw  a  mouth  as  well  as  this,  there  nmst 
be  more  than  twenty  gradations  of  shade  in  the  touches ;  that  is  tc 
say,  in  this  case,  gradations  changing,  with  meaning,  within  less  than 
the  thousandth  of  an  inch. 

"  But  this;  is  mere  child's  play  comjjared  to  the  refinement  of  a  first- 
rate  mechanical  work — much  more  of  brush  or  pencil  drawing  by  a 
master's  hand.  In  order  at  once  to  furnish  you  with  authoritative 
evidence  on  this  point,  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Kingsley,  tutor  of  Sidney-Sus- 
sex College,  a  friend  to  whom  I  always  have  recourse  when  I  want  to 
be  precisely  right  in  any  matter ;  lor  his  great  knowledge  both  of 
mathematics  and  of  natural  science  is  joined,  not  only  with  singular 
powers  of  deUcate  experimental  manipulation,  but  with  a  keen  sensi- 
tiveness to  beauty  in  art.  His  answer,  in  its  final  statement  respecting 
Turner's  work,  is  amazing  even  to  me,  and  will,  T  should  think,  be 
more  so  to  your  readers.  Observe  the  successions  of  measured  and 
tested  refinement :  here  is  No.  1 ; — 

" '  The  finest  mechanical  work  that  I  know,  which  is  not  optical,  is 
that  done  by  Nobert  in  the  way  of  ruling  lines.  I  have  a  series  I'uled 
by  h'm  on  glass,  giving  actual  scales  from  •000024  and  "000016  of  an 
inch,  perfectly  correct  to  these  places  of  decimals,  and  he  has  executed 
others  as  fine  as  -000012,  though  I  do  not  know  how  far  he  could  re- 
peat these  last  Avith  accuracy.' 

"  This  is  No.  1,  of  precision.     Mr.  Kingsley  proceeds  to  No.  2: — 

" '  But  tins  is  rude  work  compared  to  the  accuracy  necessary  for  tiie 


APPENDIX  IV.  211 

eotistruction  of  the  object-g.ass  of  a  microscope  such  as  Rosse  turns 
out.' 

''I  am  sorry  tc  omit  the  explanation  which  follows  of  the  ten  lenses 
composing  such  a  glass,  '  each  of  which  umst  be  exact  in  radius  and  in 
jaiface,  and  all  ha'-e  their  axes  coincident:'  but  it  would  not  be  intel- 
ligible without  the  figure  by  which  it  is  illustrated ;  so  I  pass  to  Mr. 
Kingsley's  No.  3 : — 

"  '  I  am  tolerably  familiar,'  he  proceeds,  '  with  the  actual  griudiug 
and  polishing  of  lenses  and  specula,  and  have  produced  by  my  own 
hand  some  by  no  means  bad  optical  work,  and  I  have  copied  no  small 
amount  of  Turner's  work,  and  /  still  look  with  uwe  at  the  combined  deli- 
racy  (Hid  precision  of  his  hand;  it  beats  optical  work  out  of  sfght. 
In  optical  work,  as  in  refined  drawing,  the  hand  goes  beyond  the  eye, 
and  one  has  to  depend  upon  the  feel ;  and  when  one  has  once  learned 
what  a  delicate  affair  touch  is,  one  gets  a  horror  of  all  coarse  work,  and 
is  ready  to  forgive  any  amount  of  feebleness,  sooner  than  that  boldness 
which  is  akin  to  impudence.  In  optics  the  distinction  is  easily  seen 
when  the  work  is  put  to  trial;  but  here  too,  as  in  drawing,  it  requires 
an  educated  eye  to  tell  the  difference  when  the  work  is  only  moderately 
bad;  but  with  "bold"  work,  nothing  can  be  seen  but  distortion  and 
fog :  and  I  heartily  wish  the  same  result  would  follow  the  same  kind 
ol  handling  in  drawing ;  but  here,  the  boldness  cheats  the  unlearned  by 
looking  like  the  precision  of  the  true  man.  It  is  very  strange  how 
much  better  our  ears  are  than  our  eyes  in  this  country:  if  an  ignorant 
man  were  to  be  "  bold  "  with  a  violin,  he  would  not  get  many  admirers, 
though  his  boldness  was  far  below  that  of  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred 
drawings  one  sees.' 

"  The  words  which  I  have  put  in  italics  in  the  above  extract  are 
those  which  were  surprising  to  me.  I  knew  that  Turner's  was  as  re- 
fined as  any  optical  work,  but  had  no  idea  of  its  going  beyond  it.  Mr. 
Kingsley's  word  'awe'  occurring  just  before,  is,  however  as  T  have 
olten  felt,  precisely  the  right  one.  When  once  we  begin  at  all  to  un- 
derstand the  handling  of  any  truly  great  executor,  such  as  that  of  any 
o\  the  three  great  Venetians,  of  Correggio,  or  Turner,  the  awe  of  it  is 
something  greater  than  can  be  felt  from  the  most  stupendous  natural 
scenery.  For  the  creation  of  such  a  system  as  a  high  human  intelli- 
^;ence,  endowed  with  ita  ineffably  [jfrlect  instruments  of  eye  and  hand. 


212  APPENDICES. 

is  a  fai  iL  )re  appalling  manifestation  of  Infinite  Power,  than  the  mak 
ing  either  of  seas  or  »Tiountains. 

"  After  this  testimony  to  tiie  completion  of  Turner's  work,  I  ne«d 
not  at  length  defend  myself  from  the  charge  of  hyperbole  in  the  state- 
ment that,  'as  far  as  I  know,  the  galleries  of  Europe  may  be  chalkmged 
to  produce  one  sketch*  that  shall  equal  the  chalk  study  No.  45,  or  the 
feeblest  of  the  memoranda  in  the  71st  and  following  frames ; '  which 
'jiemoranda,  however,  it  should  have  been  observed,  are  stated  at  the 
44th  page  to  be  in  some  respects  '  the  grandest  work  in  grey  that  he 
did  in  his  life.'  For  I  believe  that,  as  manipulators,  none  but  the  lour 
men  whom  I  have  just  uarued  (the  three  Venetians  and  Correggio; 
were  equal  to  Turner ;  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  none  of  those  four  ever 
put  their  full  strength  into  sketches.  But  whether  they  did  or  not, 
my  statement  in  the  catalogue  is  limited  by  my  own  knowledge :  and, 
as  far  as  I  can  trust  that  knowledge,  it  is  not  an  enthusiastic  state- 
ment, but  an  entirely  calm  and  considered  one.  It  may  be  a  mistake 
but  it  is  not  a  hyperbole." 


APPENDIX  V. 


I  CAN  only  give,  to  illustrate  this  balcony,  fac-similes  of  rough  memo 
randa  made  on  a  single  leaf  of  my  note-book,  with  a  tired  hand ;  but 
it  may  be  useful  to  young  students  to  see  them,  in  order  that  they  may 
know  the  difference  between  notes  made  to  get  at  the  gist  and  heart 
of  a  thing,  and  notes  made  merely  to  look  neat.  Only  it  must  be  ob- 
served that  the  best  characters  of  free  drawing  are  always  lost  even  in 

*  A  sketch,  observe, — not  a  finished  drawing.  Sketches  are  only  proper 
s'ibjects  of  comparison  with  each  other  when  they  contain  about  the  aamt 
quantity  of  work:  the  test  of  their  merit  is  the  quantity  of  truth  told  with  s 
s^'wen  number  of  touches.  The  assertion  in  the  Catalogue  wliicli  this  lettei 
was  written  to  defend,  was  n:ade  respecting  the  sketch  of  Rome,  No.  101. 


APPENDIX  V. 


21; 


the  most  careful  fac-simile ;  and  I  should  not  show  even  tlifse  slighi 
iioles  in  wood-cut  imitation,  unless  the  reader  had  it  in  his  power,  by 
a  glance  at  the  21st  or  35th  plates  in  Modern  Painters  (and  yet  better, 
by  trying  to  copy  a  piece  of  either  of  them),  to  ascertain  how  far  I  cud 
draw  or  not.  I  refer  to  these  plates,  because^  though  I  distinctly 
stated  in  the  preface  that  they,  together  with  the  I2th,  20th,  34tli, 
and  37tli,  were  executed  on  the  steel  by  my  own  hand,  (the  use  of  the 
dry  point  in  the  foregrounds  of  the  12th  and  21st  plates  being  more- 
over wholly  different  from  the  common  processes  of  etching)  I  find  it 
constantly  assumed  that  they  were  engraved  lor  me — as  if  direi-t 
lying  in  such  matters  were  a  thing  of  quite  common  usage. 

Fig.  2  is  the  centre-piece  of  the  balcony,  but  a  leaf-spray  is  omitted 
on  the  right-hand  side,  having  been  too  much  buried  among  the  real 
leaves  to  be  drawn. 


Fig.  9. 

Fig.  3  shows  the  intended  general  effect  of 
•13  iiiasaes,  the  five-leaved  and .  six-leaved 
tlowers  being  cl<;arly  distinguishable  at  any 
di.^tancc. 

Fig.  4  is  its  profile,  rather  carefully  drawn 
at  the  top,  to  show  the  tulip  and  turkscaji 
lily    leaves.       Underneath    there    is    a    plaie 


Kifir-  a. 


214 


APPENDICES. 


of  iron  beaten    into   broad  tliin    leaves,  which   gives   the   centie   Cl 
the  balcony  a  gradual  sweep  outwards,  like  the  side   of  a  ship    y 


Fig.  4. 


«rar.     This  central  profile  is  of  the  greatest  importance  in  ironwon^ 


APPENDIX  V. 


2\t 


as  ihe  flow  of  it  affects  the  curves  of  the  whole  design,  not  merely  in 
Burface,  as  iu  marble  carving,  but  in  their  intersections,  when  the  side 
is  seen  through  the  I'ront.     The  lighter  leaves,  b  b,  are  real  bindweed. 

Fig.  5  shows  two  of  the  teeth  of  the 
border,  illustrating  their  irregularity  of 
form,  which  takes  place  quite  to  the  extent 
indicated. 

Fig.  6  is  the  border  at  the  side  of  the 
balcony,    showing    the    most    interesting  *  '^'  ^' 

circumstance  in  the  treatment  of  the  whole,  namely,  the  enlargemeni 
and  retraction  ol  the  teeth  of  the  cornice,  as  it  approaches  the  wall. 


This  treatment  of  the  whole  cornice  as  a  kind  of  wreath  round  the 
balcony,  having  its  leaves  flung  loose  at  the  back,  and  set  close  at  the 
front,  as  a  giil  would  throw  a  wreath  of  leaves  round  her  hair,  is  pre- 
cisely the  most  finished  indication  of  a  good  workman's  mind  to  bo 
found  in  the  whole  thing. 

Fig.  7  shows  the  outline  of  the  retracted  leaves  accurately. 


Fig.  T. 

It  was  noted  in  the  text  that  the  whole  of  this  ironwork  had  beer 
coloured.  The  difficulty  of  colouring  ironwork  rightly,  and  tht 
necessity  of  doing  it  in  some  way  or  other,  have  been  the  principal 
reasons  for  my  never  having  entered  heartily  into  this  subject;  for  all 
the  ironwork  I  have  ever  seen  look  beautiful  was  rusty,  uud  rusly  iron 


216  APPENDICES. 

will  not  answer  modern  purposes.     Nevertheless   it  maybe  painted 
out  it  needs  some  one  to  do  it  who  knows  what  painting  means,  and 
few  of  us  do — certainly  none,  as  yet,  of  our  restorers  of  decoiation  o' 
writers  on  colour. 

It  is  a  marvellous  thing  to  me  that  book  after  book  should  appear  on 
Ihis  last  subject,  without  apparently  the  slightest  consciousness  on  the 
part  of  the  writers  that  the  first  necessity  of  beauty  in  colour  is  grada- 
tion, as  the  first  necessity  of  beauty  in  fine  is  curvature, — or  that  the 
second  necessity  in  colour  is  mystery  or  subtlety,  as  the  secoi  d  neces- 
sity ni  line  is  softness.  Colour  ungradated  is  wholly  valueless ;  colour 
unmysterious  is  wholly  barbarous.  Unless  it  loses  itself  and  nielta 
away  towards  other  colours,  as  a  true  line  loses  itself  and  melts  away 
towards  other  lines,  colour  has  no  proper  existence,  in  the  noble  sense 
of  the  word.  What  a  cube,  or  tetrahedron,  is  to  organic  form,  ungra- 
dated and  unconfused  colour  is  to  organic  colour ;  and  a  person  who 
attempts  to  arrange  colour  harmonies  without  gradation  of  tint  is  in 
precisely  the  same  category,  as  an  artist  who  should  try  to  compose 
a  beautiful  picture  out  of  an  accumulation  of  cubes  and  parallelopi- 
peds. 

The  value  of  hue  in  all  illuminations  on  painted  glass  of  fine  periods 
depends  primarily  on  the  expedients  used  to  make  the  colours  palpitate 
and  fluctuate;  inequality  of  brilliancy  being  the  condition  of  brilliancy, 
just  as  inequality  of  accent  is  the  condition  of  power  and  loveliness  in 
sound.  The  skill  with  which  the  thirteenth  century  illuminators  in 
books,  and  the  Indians  in  shawls  and  carpets,  use  the  minutest  atoms 
of  colour  to  gradate  other  colours,  and  confuse  the  eye,  is  the  first 
secret  in  their  gift  of  splendour :  associated,  however,  with  so  many 
other  artifices  which  are  quite  instinctive  and  unteachable,  that  it  is  o. 
little  use  to  dwell  upon  them.  Dehcacy  of  organization  in  the  designer 
given,  you  will  soon  have  all,  and  without  it,  nothing.  However,  not 
to  close  my  book  with  desponding  words,  let  me  set  down,  as  many 
of  us  like  such  thingSj  five  Laws  to  which  there  is  no  exception 
whatever,  and  whi;h,  if  they  can  enable  no  one  to  produce  good 
colour,  are  at  least,  as  far  as  they  reach,  accurately  condemnatory  of 
bad  colour. 

1.  All  good  colour  is  gradated.  A  blush  rose  (or,  better  still 
a  blush  itself),  is  the  type  of  rightness  in  arrangement  of  pure  hue. 


APPENDIX  V.  217 

2  AXL  HARMONIES  OF  COLOUR  DEPEND  FOR  THEIR  VITALITY  ON  THl 
ICTIOM  AND  HELPFUL  OPERATION  OF  EVERY  PARTICLE  OF  COLOUR  TFIET 
CONTAIN. 

3.  The  final  particles  of  colour  necessary  to  the  completeness 
OF  A  colour  harmony  ARE  ALWAYS  INFINITELY  SMALL;  either  laid  hy 
immeasurably  subtle  touches  of  the  pencil,  or  produced  by  portions  of 
the  colouring  substance,  however  distributed,  which  are  so  absolutely 
small  as  to  become  at  the  intended  distance  infinitely  so  to  the  eye. 

4.  No  COI>OUR  HARMONY  IS  OF  HIGH  ORDER  UNLESS  IT  INVOLVES  INDE- 
SCRIBABLE TINTS.  It  is  the  best  possible  sign  of  a  colour  when  nobody 
who  sees  it  knows  what  to  call  it,  or  how  to  give  an  idea  of  it  to  any 
one  else.  Even  among  simple  hues  the  most  valuable  are  thoso 
which  cannot  be  defined  ;  the  most  precious  purples  will  look  brown 
beside  pure  purple,  and  purple  beside  pure  brown ;  and  the  most  pre- 
cious greens  will  be  called  blue  if  seen  beside  pure  green,  and  green  if 
seen  beside  pure  blue. 

5.  TlUE    FINER    THE    EYE     FOR    COLOUR,    THE    LESS    IT    WILL    REQUIRE    TO 

GRATIFY  IT  INTENSELY.  Bul  that  Uttls  must  be  supremely  good  and 
pure,  as  the  Qni!st  notes  of  a  great  singer,  which  are  so  near  to  silence. 
And  a  great  colourist  will  make  even  the  absence  of  colour  lovely,  u 
the  fading  of  the  perfect  voice  makes  silence  sacred. 


LECTURES  ON  ART 

HUSKm. 


.    LECTURES  ON   ART 


DiVLIVERED   BEFORE  THE   UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORL 
IN  HILARY  TERM,  1870 


wr 


JOHN    UUSKIN,    M.A, 

HONORAHT   HTUKENT  OF  CHRIHT  OHUROB 
SULDK  PBOFESSOR  Or  FIHB  ABT 


NEW   YORK: 

JOHJS    WILEY   AND   .SONS, 
53  East  Tenth  Stuekt, 

SecoDd  door  west  of  Broadway. 

1891. 


CONTENTS. 


Ftdl 


LEcm»/E  1.  Inauoueai.       ...              ...  1 

"  2.  The  Rh-^tion  of  Art  1(»  RKLif^ioN  .  35 

"  3.  The  Relation  of  Art  to  Morat^s     .  09 

"  4.  The  Rela'hon  of  Art  jo  Use      .     ,  09 

"  6.  Line .     .  129 

"  6.  Light 155 

**  7  CoLouB 187 


tttnxt  I 


INAUGURAL 


INAUGURAL. 

The  duty  which  is  to-day  laid  on  me,  of  introducing, 
among  the  elements  of  education  appointed  in  this  great 
University,  one  not  only  new,  but  such  as  to  involve  in 
its  possible  results  some  modification  of  the  rest,  is,  as 
you  well  feel,  so  grave,  that  no  man  could  undertake  it 
without  laying  himself  open  to  the  imputation  of  a  kind 
of  insolence;  and  no  man  could  midertake  it  rightly, 
without  being  in  danger  of  ha^^ug  his  hands  shortened 
l)y  dread  of  his  task,  and  mistrust  of  himself. 

And  it  has  chanced  to  me,  of  late,  to  be  so  little  ac- 
quainted either  with  pride,  or  hojje,  that  I  can  scarcely 
recover  so  much  as  I  now  need  of  the  one  for  strength, 
and  of  the  other  for  foresight,  except  by  remembering 
that  noble  persons,  and  friends  of  the  liigh  temper  that 
judges  most  clearly  where  it  loves  best,  have  def^'-e^^  that 
this  trust  should  be  given  me ;  and  by  I'estmg  also  in 
the  conviction  that  the  goodly  tree,  whose  roots,  by  God's 
help,  we  set  in  earth  to-day,  will  not  fail  of  its  height 
because  the  planting  of  it  is  under  poor  auspices,  or  the 
first  shoots  of  it  enfeebled  by  ill  gardening. 


INAUGURAL. 


2.  The  munificence  of  the  English  gentleman  to  whom 
we  owe  the  founding  of  this  Professorship  at  once  m 
our  three  great  Universities,  has  accomplished  the  first 
g]-eat  group  of  a  series  of  changes  now  taking  gradua* 
effect  in  our  system  of  public  education ;  and  which,  as 
you  well  know,  are  the  sign  of  a  vital  change  in  the 
national  mind,  respecting  both  the  principles  on  which 
that  education  should  be  conducted,  and  the  ranl^s  of 
society  to  which  it  should  extend.  For,  whereas  it  was 
formerly  thought  that  the  discipline  necessary  to  foriL 
the  character  of  youth  was  best  given  in  the  study  of 
abstract  branches  of  literature  and  philosophy,  it  m 
now  thought  that  the  same,  or  a  better,  discipline  may 
be  given  by  informing  men  in  early  years-  of  things 
it  cannot  but  be  of  chief  practical  ad\'antage  to  them 
afterwards  to  know;  and  by  permitting  to  them  the 
choice  of  any  field  of  study  which  they  may  feel  to  be 
best  adapted  to  their  personal  dispositions.  I  have  al- 
ways used  what  poor  influence  I  possessed  in  advancing 
this  change ;  nor  can  any  one  rejoice  more  than  I  in 
its  practical  results.  But  the  completion — I  will  not 
venture  to  say,  correction — of  a  system  established  hy 
the  highest  wisdom  of  noble  ancestors,  cannot  be  too 
reverently  undertaken :  and  it  is  necessary  for  the 
English  people,  who  are  sometimes  violent  in  change  in 
proportion  to  the  reluctance  with  which  they  admit  its 
necessity,  to  be  now  oftener  than  at  other  times  re- 
minded  that   the  objecit  of  instruction  here  is  not  pri 


INAUGITRAL.  8 

marily  attainment,  but  discipline ;  and  that  a  youth  is 
sent  tc  our  Universities,  not  (liitherto  at  least)  to  be 
apprenticed  to  a  trade,  nor  even  always  to  be  advanced 
in  a  profession ;  but,  always,  to  be  made  a  gentleman 
and  a  scholar. 

3.  To  be  made  these, — if  there  is  in  him  the  making 
of  either.  The  populace  of  all  civilized  countries  have 
lately  been  under  a  feverish  impression  that  it  is  pos- 
sible for  all  men  to  be  both ;  and  that  having  once 
become,  by  passing  through  certain  mechanical  processes 
of  instruction,  gentle  and  learned,  they  are  sure  to 
attain  in  the  sequel  the  consummate  beatitude  of  being 
rich. 

Rich,  in  the  way  and  measm-e  in  which  it  is  well 
for  them  to  be  so,  they  may,  without  doubt,  all  become. 
There  is  indeed  a  land  of  Ilavilah  open  to  them,  of 
which  the  wonderful  sentence  is  literally  true — 'The  gold 
of  that  land  is  good.'  But  they  must  first  understand, 
that  education,  in  its  deepest  sense,  is  not  the  equalizer, 
but  the  disceruer,  of  men  ;  and  that,  so  far  from  being 
instruments  for  the  collection  of  riches,  the  first  lesson 
of  wisdom  is  to  disdain  them,  and  of  gentleness,  to 
diffuse. 

It  is  not  therefore,  as  far  we  can  judge,  yet  possible 
for  all  men  to  be  gentlemen  and  scholars.  Even  under 
tlie  best  training  some  will  remain  too  selfish  to  refuse 
wealtli,  and  some  too  dull  to  desire  leisure.  But  manjf 
Miore   might  be   so   than   arc   now  ;  nay,  perhaps  all  men 


mAUGURAL. 


iu  England  might  one  day  be  so,  if  England  truly  desired 
her  supremacy  among  the  nations  to  be  in  kindness  and 
in  learning.  To  which  good  end,  it  will  indeed  contri- 
bute that  we  add  some  practice  of  the  lower  arts  to 
our  scheme  of  University  education ;  but  the  thing; 
which  is  vitally  necessary  is,  that  we  should  exterd 
the  spirit  of  University  education  to  the  practice  of 
the  lower  arts. 

4.  And,  above  all,  it  is  needful  that  we  do  this  by 
redeeming  them  from  their  present  pain  of  self -contempt, 
and  by  giving  them  rest.  It  has  been  too  long  boasted 
as  the  pride  of  England,  that  out  of  a  vast  multitude 
of  men  confessed  to  be  iu  e\i\  case,  it  was  possible  for 
individuals,  by  strenuous  effort,  and  singular  -good  for- 
tune, occasionally  to  emerge  into  the  light,  and  look 
back  with  self-gratulatory  scorn  upon  the  occupations  of 
their  parents,  and  the  circumstances  of  their  infancy. 
Ought  we  not  rather  to  aim  at  an  ideal  of  national  life, 
when,  of  the  employments  of  Englishmen,  though  each 
shall  be  distinct,  none  shall  be  unhapj^y  or  ignoble; 
when  mechanical  operations  acknowledged  to  l)e  debasing 
in  their  tendency,  shall  be  deputed  to  less  fortunate  and 
more  covetous  races ;  when  advance  from  rank  t(  >  rank, 
though  possible  to  all  men,  may  be  rather  shunned  than 
desired  by  the  best;  and  the  chief  object  in  the  mind 
of  every  citizen  may  not  be  extrication  from  a  condition 
admitted  to  be  disgraceful,  but  fulfilinent  of  a  duty  vihu'h 
shall  be  also  a  ])irthrii>ht  ? 


INAUGURAL.  6 

5.  And  then,  tlie  training  of  al]  these  distinct  classes 
will  not  be  by  Universities  of  all  knowledge,  but  bj 
distinct  schools  of  such  knowledge  as  shall  be  most  use- 
ful for  every  class  :  in  which,  iirst  the  principles  of  their 
special  business  may  be  perfectly  taught,  and  whatever 
higher  learning,  and  cultivation  of  the  faculties  for  re- 
ceiving and  giving  pleasure,  may  be  properly  joined  witJi 
that  labour,  taught  in  connection  with  it.  Thus,  I  do 
not  despair  of  seeing  a  School  of  Agriculture,  with  its 
fully-endowed  institutes  of  zoology,  botany,  and  chemis- 
try ;  and  a  School  of  Mercantile  Seamanship,  with  its 
institutes  of  astronomy,  meteorology,  and  natural  history 
of  the  sea :  and,  to  name  only  one  of  the  finer,  I  do  not 
say  higher,  arts,  we  shall,  I  ho])e,  in  a  little  time,  have 
a  perfect  school  of  Metal-work,  at  the  head  of  which  will 
be,  not  the  ironmasters,  but  the  goldsmiths ;  and  therein, 
I  believe,  that  artists,  being  taught  how  to  deal  wisely 
with  the  most  precious  of  metals,  will  take  into  due 
government  the  uses  of  all  others;  having  in  connection 
with  their  practical  work  splendid  institutes  of  chemistry 
and  mineralogy,  and  of  ethical  and  imaginative  liter 
ature. 

And  thus  I  confess  myself  more  interested  in  the  final 
issue  of  the  change  in  our  system  of  central  education, 
which  is  to-day  consummated  by  the  admission  of  the 
manual  arts  into  its  scheme,  than  in  any  direct  effect 
likely  to  result  upon  ourselves  from  the  innovation, 
liut  1  must  not  j)crmit    myself  to  fail  in  the  estimate  oi 


6  INAUGURAL. 

my  immediate  duty,  while  I  debate  what  that  dutji  maj 
hereafter  become  in  tlie  hands  of  others ;  and  ]  will 
therefore  now,  so  far  as  I  am  able,  lay  before  you  a  briei 
general  view  of  the  existing  state  of  the  arts  in  England, 
and  of  the  influence  which  her  Universities,  through 
these  newly-founded  lectureships,  may,  I  think,  bring  tc 
bear  upon  it  for  good. 

6.  And  first,  we  have  to  consider  the  impulse  which 
has  been  given  to  the  practice  of  all  the  arts  of  which 
the  object  is  the  production  of  beautiful  things,  by  the 
extension  of  our  commerce,  and  of  the  means  of  inter- 
course with  foreign  nations,  by  which  we  now  becolne 
more  familiarly  acquainted  -svith  their  works  in  past  and 
in  present  times.  The  immediate  result  of  this  new  know- 
ledge has  been,  I  regret  to  say,  to  make  us  more  jealous 
of  the  genius  of  others,  than  conscious  of  the  limitations 
of  our  own ;  and  to  make  us  rather  desire  to  enlarge 
our  wealth  by  the  sale  of  art,  than  to  elevate  our  enjoy- 
ments by  its  acquisition. 

Now,  whatever  efforts  we  make,  with  a  true  desire  to 
produce,  and  possess,  as  themselves  a  constituent  part  of 
true  wealth,  things  that  are  intrinsically  beautiful,  have 
in  them  at  least  one  of  the  essential  elements  of  success. 
But  efforts  having  origin  only  in  the  hope  of  enriching 
ourselves  by  the  sale  of  our  productions,  are  assuredl}' 
condemned  to  dishonourable  failure ;  not  because,  ulti 
mately  a  well-trained  nation  may  not  profit  by  the 
exercise  of  its  peculiar  art-skill;    but  because  that  pecu 


INAUGURAL.  7 

liar  art-skill  can  never  be  developed  with  a  view  to 
profit.  The  right  fulfilment  of  national  power  in  aii 
depends  always  on  the  direction  of  its  aim  by  the  ex- 
perience of  ages.  Self-knowledge  is  not  less  difficult, 
nor  less  necessary  for  the  direction  of  its  genius,  to  a 
people  than  to  an  individual,  and  it  is  neither  to  be 
acquired  by  the  eagerness  of  unpractised  pride,  nor 
during  the  anxieties  of  improvident  distress.  No  nation 
ever  had,  or  will  have,  the  power  of  suddenly  developing, 
under  the  pressure  of  necessity,  faculties  it  had  neglected 
when  it  was  at  ease ;  nor  of  teaching  itself  in  poverty, 
the  skill  to  produce,  what  it  has  never  in  opulence  had 
the  sense  to  admire. 

7.  Connected  also  with  some  of  the  worst  parts  of 
our  social  system,  but  capable  of  being  directed  to  h(3tter 
result  than  tliis  commercial  endeavour,  we  see  latisly  a 
most  powerful  impulse  given  to  the  production  of  <  ;ostly 
works  of  art  by  the  various  causes  which  promote  the 
sudden  accumulation  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  private 
persons.  We  ha\e  thus  a  vast  and  new  patronage, 
which,  in  its  present  agency,  is  injurious  to  our  schools; 
but  which  is  nevertlieless  in  a  great  degree  earnest  and 
conscientious,  and  far  from  l)eing  influenced  chiefly  by 
motives  of  ostentation.  Most  of  our  rich  men  would 
be  glad  to  promote  the  true  interests  of  art  in  thie 
country;  ard  even  those  who  buy  for  vanity,  found 
their  vanity  on  the  possession  of  what  they  suppose  tc 
be  best. 


6  INACrGTJKAL. 

It  is  therefore  in  a  great  measure  the  fault  of  artisU 
themselves  if  they  suffer  from  this  partly  unintelligent, 
but  thoroughly  well-intended  patronage.  If  they  seek 
to  attract  it  by  eccentricity,  to  deceive  it  by  superficial 
qualities,  or  take  advantage  of  it  by  thoughtless  and 
facile  production,  they  necessarily  degrade  themselves  and 
it  together,  and  have  no  right  to  complain  afterwards 
that  it  will  not  acknowledge  better-grounded  claims. 
But  if  every  painter  of  real  power  would  do  only  what 
he  knew  to  be  worthy  of  himself,  and  refuse  to  be  in- 
volved in  the  contention  for  undeserved  or  accidental 
success,  there  is  indeed,  whatever  may  have  been  thought 
or  said  to  the  contrary,  true  instinct  enough  in  the 
public  mind  to  follow  such  firm  guidance.  It  is  one  of 
the  facts  which  the  experience  of  thirty  years  enables 
rae  to  assert  without  qualification,  that  a  really  good 
picture  is  ultimately  always  approved  and  bought,  unless 
it  is  wilfully  rendered  offensive  to  the  public  by  faults 
which  the  artist  has  been  either  too  proud  to  abandon, 
or  too  weak  to  correct. 

8.  The  development  of  whatever  is  healthful  and  ser- 
viceable in  the  two  modes  of  impulse  which  we  have 
been  considering,  depends  however,  ultimately,  on  the 
direction  taken  by  the  true  interest  in  art  which  has 
lately  been  aroused  by  the  great  and  active  genius  oi 
many  of  our  living,  or  but  lately  lost,  painters,  sculptors^ 
and  architects.  It  may  perhaps  surprise,  but  I  tliink  it 
will  please  you  to  hear  me,  or  (if  you  will  forgive  me, 


mAUGURAL.  f 

111  my  own  Oxtord,  the  presumption    of   fancying  that 

some  may  recognize  me   by  an   old  name)  to  hear  the 

author  of  'Modern  Painters'  say,  that  his  chief  error  ir 

earlier   days  was    not    in    over-estimating,    but   in   toe 

slightly  acknowledging  the  merit  of  living  men.      The 

great  painter  whose  power,  while  he  was  yet  among  us^ 

I  was  able  to  perceive,  was  the  first  to  reprove  me  for 

my   disregard   of    the   skill  of    his  fellow-artists  ;   and, 

with  this  inauguration  of   the  study  of  the  art   of   all 

time, — a  study  which   can   only   by    true   modesty  end 

in  wise   admiration, — it  is    surely    well   that  I   connect 

the  record  of  these  words  of  his,  spoken  then  too  truly 

to   myself,  and  true  always  more   or  less   for  all  who 

are  untrained    in    that    toil, — '  You    don't    know  how 

difticult  it  is.' 

You  will  not  expect  me,  within  the  compaes  of  this 

lecture,  to  give  you  any  analysis  of  the  many  kinds  of 

excellent  art  (in  all  the  three  great  divisions)  which  the 

complex  demands  of  modern  life,  and  yet  more  varied 

instincts  of  modern  genius,  have  developed  for  pleasure 

or  service.      It  must   be  my  endeavour,  in   conjunction 

with  my  colleagues  in  the  other  Univei-sities,  hereafter  to 

enable  you  to  appreciate  these  worthily ;  in  the  hope  that 

also  the  membei-s  of  the  Eoyal  Academy,  and  those  of 

the  Institute  of  British  Architects,  may  be  induced  to 

assist,   and   guide,   the    efforts    of    the   Universities,   by 

organizing  such  a  system  of  art  education  for  their  own 

Btudentfl  as  shall  in  future  prevent  the  waste  of  geuiui 
1* 


10  INAUGURAL. 

in  any  mistaken  endeavours;  especially  remcndng  doubt 
as  to  the  proper  substance  and  use  of  materials;  and 
requiring  compliance  with  certain  elementary  principles 
of  right,  in  every  picture  and  design  exhibited  with  their 
sanction.  It  is  not  indeed  possible  for  talent  so  varied 
as  that  of  English  artists  to  be  compelled  into  the  for- 
malities of  a  determined  school;  but  it  must  certainly 
be  the  function  of  every  academical  body  to  see  that 
their  younger  students  are  guarded  fi'om  what  must  iz 
every  school  be  error ;  and  that  they  are  practised  in  the 
best  methods  of  work  hitherto  known,  before  their  inge 
nuity  is  directed  to  the  invention  of  others. 

9.  1  need  scarcely  refer,  except  for  the  sake  of  com- 
pleteness in  my  statement,  to  one  form  of  demand  for 
art  which  is  wholly  unenlightened,  and  powerful  only  foi 
evil ; — namely,  the  demand  of  the  classes  occupied  solely 
in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  for  objects  and  modes  of  art 
that  can  amuse  indolence  or  satisfy  sensibility.  There  is 
no  need  for  any  discussion  of  these  requirements,  or  of 
their  forms  of  influence,  though  they  are  very  deadly  at 
present  in  their  operation  on  sciilpture,  and  on  jewellers' 
work.  They  cannot  be  checked  by  blame,  nor  guided 
by  instruction ;  they  are  merely  the  necessary  results  of 
whatever  defects  exist  in  the  temper  and  principles  of  a 
luxurious  society;  and  it  is  only  by  moral  changes,  not 
by  art-criticism,  that  their  action  can  be  modified. 

10.  Lastly,  there  is  a  continually  increasing  demand 
for  popular  art,  multipliable  by  the  printing-press,  illna 


INAUGURAL.  1  I 

rrative  of  daily  events,  of  general  literature,  and  ol 
natural  science.  Admirable  skill,  and  some  of  the  best 
talent  of  modem  times,  are  occupied  in  supplying  this 
want ;  and  there  is  no  limit  to  the  good  which  may  be 
effected  by  rightly  taking  advantage  of  the  powers  we 
now  possess  of  placing  good  and  lovely  art  within  the 
reach  of  the  poorest  classes.  Much  has  been  already 
accomplished ;  but  great  harm  has  been  done  also, — first, 
by  forms  of  art  definitely  addressed  to  deprax  ed  tastes ; 
and,  secondly,  in  a  more  subtle  way,  by  really  beautiful 
and  useful  engravings  which  are  yet  n(jt  good  enough 
to  retain  their  influence  on  the  public  mind ; — which 
weary  it  by  redundant  quantity  of  monotonous  average 
excellence,  and  diminish  or  destroy  its  power  of  accurate 
attention  to  work  of  a  higher  order. 

Especially  this  is  to  be  regretted  in  the  effect  pro- 
duced on  the  schools  of  line  engraving,  which  had 
reached  in  England  an  executive  skill  of  a  kind  before 
unexampled,  and  which  of  late  have  lost  mucli  of  their 
more  sterling  and  legitimate  methods.  Still,  I  have  seen 
plates  produced  quite  recently,  more  beautiful,  I  think,  in 
Bome  qualities  than  anything  e\er  before  attained  by  the 
burin :  and  I  have  not  the  slightest  fear  that  photography, 
or  any  other  adverse  or  competitive  operation,  will  in  the 
least  ultimately  diminish, — 1  believe  they  will,  on  the 
contrary,  stimulate  and  exalt — the  grand  old  powers  of 
die  wood  and  the  steel. 

11.    Such   are,  I  think,  briefiy  the  present  conditions 


12  mAUGURAL.. 

of  art  with  which  wv3  have  to  deal ;  and  I  conceive  it  tc 
be  the  function  of  this  Professorship,  with  respect  tc 
them,  to  establish  both  a .  practical  and  critical  school  ol 
fine  art  for  English  gentlemen  :  practical,  so  that  if  they 
draw  at  all,  they  may  draw  rightly  ;  and  critical,  so  that 
tliey  may  both  be  directed  to  such  works  of  existing  art 
as  will  best  reward  their  study ;  and  enabled  to  make 
the  exercise  of  their  patronage  of  living  artists  delightful 
to  themselves  by  their  consciousness  of  its  justice,  and, 
to  the  utmost,  beneficial  to  their  country,  by  being  given 
only  to  the  men  who  deserve  it ;  and,  to  those,  in  the 
early  period  of  their  lives,  when  they  both  need  it  most, 
and  can  be  influenced   by  it  to  the  best  advantage. 

12.  And  especially  with  reference  to  this  function  of 
patronage,  I  believe  myself  justified  in  taking  into  account 
future  probabilities  as  to  the  character  and  range  of  an 
in  England ;  and  I  shall  endeavour  at  once  to  organize 
with  you  a  system  of  study  calculated  to  develope  chiefly 
the  knowledge  of  those  branches  in  which  tlie  English 
schools  have  shown,  and  are  likely  to  show,  peculiar  ex- 
cellence. Now,  in  asking  your  sanction  both  for  the 
nature  of  the  general  j^lans  I  wish  to  adopt,  and  for 
what  I  conceive  to  be  necessary  limitations  of  them,  1 
wish  you  to  be  fully  aware  of  my  reasons  for  both :  and 
I  will  therefore  risk  the  burdening  of  your  patience  while 
1  state  the  directions  of  effort  in  which  1  think  English 
artists  are  liable  to  failure,  and  those  also  in  which  past 
exj)ericnce  has  shown  they  are  secure  of  success. 


INAUGURAL.  IS 

13.  I  referred,  but  now,  to  the  effort  we  are  making 
to  improve  the  designs  of  our  manufactures.  Within 
certain  limits  1  believe  this  improvement  may  indeed 
take  effect :  so  that  we  may  no  more  humour  momentary 
fashions  by  ugly  results  of  chance  instead  of  design ;  and 
may  produce  both  good  tissues,  of  harmonious  colours. 
and  good  forms  and  substance  of  pottery  and  glass.  But 
we  shall  never  excel  in  decorative  design.  Such  design 
is  usually  produced  by  people  of  great  natural  powers  ol 
mind,  who  have  no  variety  of  subjects  to  employ  them- 
selves on,  no  oppressive  anxieties,  and  are  in  circum 
stances,  either  of  natural  scenery  or  of  daily  life,  which 
cause  pleasurable  excitement.  We  cannot  design  because 
we  have  too  much  to  think  of,  and  we  think  of  it  too 
anxiously.  It  has  long  been  observed  how  little  real 
anxiety  exists  in  the  minds  of  the  partly  savage  races 
which  excel  in  decorative  art ;  and  we  must  not  suj)- 
pose  that  the  temper  of  the  middle  ages  was  a  troubled 
one,  because  every  day  brought  its  danger  or  its  changes 
The  very  eventfiilness  of  the  life  rendeied  it  careless,  as 
generally  is  still  the  case  with  soldiers  and  sailors.  Now, 
when  there  are  great  powers  of  tliought,  and  little  to 
think  of,  all  the  waste  energy  and  fancy  are  thrown  into 
the  manual  work,  and  you  have  as  much  intellect  as 
would  direct  the  affairs  of  a  large  meniantile  concern 
for  a  day,  spent  all  at  once,  quite  unconsciously,  in 
drawing  an  ingenious  spiral. 

Also,  powers  of  doing  fine  ornamental  work  are  onl^ 


14  INAUGURAL. 

to  be  reacted  by  a  perpetual  discipline  of  the  hand  ae 
well  as  of  the  fancy ;  discipline  as  attentive  and  painful 
as  that  which  a  juggler  has  to  put  himself  through,  t<j 
overcome  the  more  palpable  difhculties  of  his  jjrofession. 
The  execution  of  the  best  artists  is  always  a  splendid 
tour-de-force,  and  much  that  in  painting  is  supposed  to 
be  dependent  on  material  is  indeed  only  a  lo^el^ 
and  quite  inimitable  legerdemain.  Now,  when  powei-f 
of  fancy,  stimulated  by  this  triuTTi])hant  precision  oi 
manual  dexterity,  descend  uuiuteriMi})tedly  from  genera- 
tion to  generation,  you  lia\e  at  last,  what  is  not  so 
much  a  trained  artist  as  a  new  species  of  animal,  with 
whose  instinctive  gifts  you  have  no  chance  of  c(^ntend- 
ing.  And  thus  all  our  imitations  of  other  peoples' 
work  are  futile.  We  must  learn  fii-st  to  make  honest 
English  wares,  and  afterwards  to  decorate  them  as  may 
please  the  then  approving  Graces. 

14.  Secondly — and  this  is  an  incapacity  of  a  graver 
kind,  yet  having  its  own  good  in  it  also — we  shall  never 
be  successful  in  the  highest  fields  of  ideal  or  theological 
art.  For  there  is  one  strange,  but  quite  essential,  cha- 
racter in  118 :  ever  since  the  Conquest,  if  not  earlier : — 
a  delight  in  the  forms  of  burlesque  ^vhich  are  connected  in 
some  degree  with  the  foulness  in  evil.  I  think  the  most 
perfect  type  of  a  true  English  mind  in  its  best  possible 
temper,  is  that  of  Chaucer  ;  and  you  will  find  that,  while 
it  is  for  the  most  part  full  of  thoughts  of  beauty,  pure 
and  wild  like  that  of  an  April  morning,  there  are  e\'en 


INAUGURAL,.  18 

in  the  midst  of  this,  sometimes  momentaiily  jestine^  ])a8 
sages  which  stoop  to  play  witli  evil — while  the  power  of 
listening  to  and  enjoying  the  jesting  of  entirely  grosa 
persons,  whatever  the  feeling  may  be  which  permits  it, 
afterwards  degenerates  into  forms  of  humour  which 
i-ender  some  of  quite  the  greatest,  wasest,  and  most 
moral  of  English  writers  now  almost  useless  for  our 
youth.  And  yet  you  will  find  that  whenever  English- 
men are  wholly  witliout  this  instinct,  their  genius  ia 
comparatively  weak  and  restricted. 

15.  Now,  the  first  necessity  for  the  doing  of  an}' 
great  work  in  ideal  art,  is  the  looking  upon  all  foulness 
with  horror,  as  a  contemptible  though  dreadful  enemy. 
You  may  easily  imderstand  what  I  mean,  by  comparing 
the  feelings  with  whicn  Dante  regards  an}^  form  of  ob- 
scenity or  of  base  jest,  with  the  temper  in  which  the  same 
things  are  regarded  by  Shakespeare.  And  this  strange 
earthly  instinct  of  ours,  cou})led  as  it  is,  in  our  good  men, 
with  great  simplicity  and  common  sense,  renders  thein 
shrewd  and  perfect  observers  and  delineatoi-s  of  actual 
nature,  low  or  high ;  but  precludes  them  from  that  spe- 
I'.iality  of  art  which  is  properly  called  sublime.  If  ever 
we  try  anything  in  the  manner  of  Michael  Angelo  or  of 
Dante,  we  catch  a  fall,  even  in  literature,  as  Milton  in 
the  battle  of  the  angels,  spoiled  from  Hesiod :  while  in 
art,  every  attempt  in  this  style  has  hitherto  been  the 
sign  either  of  the  presumptuous  egotism  of  pei-sons  whc 
had  never  really  learned  to  be  workmen,  oi  it  has  been 


16  INAUGDKAL. 

connected  with  very  tragic  forms  of  the  contemplation  ol 
death, — it  has  always  been  partly  insane,  and  never  once 
wholly  successful. 

But  we  need  not  feel  any  discomfort  in  these  limit- 
ations of  our  capacity.  We  can  do  much  that  othei-a 
cannot,  and  more  than  we  have  ever  yet  ourselves  com- 
pletely done.  Our  first  great  gift  is  in  the  portraiture 
of  living  people — a  power  already  so  accomplished  in 
both  Reynolds  and  Gainsborough,  that  nothing  is  left 
for  future  masters  but  to  add  the  calm  of  perfect  work 
manship  to  their  vigour  and  felicity  of  perception.  And 
of  what  value  a  true  school  of  portraiture  may  become 
in  the  future,  when  worthy  men  will  desire  only  to  be 
known,  and  others  will  not  fear  to  know  thein  for  what 
they  truly  were,  we  cannot  from  any  past  records  of  art 
influence  yet  conceive.  But  in  my  next  address  it  will 
be  partly  my  endeavour  to  show  you  how  much  more 
useful,  because  more  humble,  the  labour  of  great  masters 
might  have  been,  had  they  been  content  to  bear  record 
of  the  souls  that  were  dwelling  with  them  on  earth, 
instead  of  striving  to  give  a  deceptive  glory  to  those 
they  dreamed  of  in  heaven. 

16.  Secondly,  we  have  an  intense  power  of  invention 
and  expression  in  domestic  drama ;  (King  Lear  and 
Hamlet  being  essentially  domestic  in  theii"  strongest 
motives  of  interest).  There  is  a  tendency  at  this  moment 
towards  a  noble  development  of  our  art  in  this  direc 
tion,  checked  by  many  adverse  C(jnditit>ns,  which  may  be 


Of  AUGURAL.  n 

.■jinnined  in  one, — the  insufliciency  of  generous  ci\'ic  oj 
patriotic  passion  in  the  heart  of  the  English  people; 
a  fault  which  makes  its  domestic  affections  sfelfish,  con 
"iracted,  and,  therefore,  frivolous. 

17.  Thirdly,  in  connection  with  our  simplicity,  and 
good -humour,  and  partly  with  that  very  love  of  the 
grotesque  which  debases  our  ideal,  we  have  a  sympathy 
with  the  lower  animals  which  is  peculiarly  our  own  ;  and 
which,  though  it  has  already  f(jund  some  exquisite  ex- 
pression in  the  works  of  Bewick  and  Landseer,  is  yet 
quite  undeveloped.  This  sympathy,  with  the  aid  of  our 
now  authoritative  science  of  physiology,  and  in  association 
with  our  British  love  of  adventure,  will,  I  hope,  enable 
us  to  give  to  the  future  inhabitants  of  the  globe  an 
almost  perfect  record  of  the  present  forms  of  animal  life 
upon  it,  of  which  many  are  on  the  point  of  being  ex- 
tinguished. 

Lastly,  but  not  as  the  least  important  of  our  special 
powera  }  have  to  note  our  skill  in  landscape,  of  which 
I  will  piescntly  speak  more  particularly. 

18.  Su'ih,  I  conceive,  to  be  the  directions  in  which, 
pnjQcipa^ljj  we  have  the  power  to  excel;  and  you  must 
at  3nce  bee  how  the  consideration  of  them  must  modify 
tho  advisable  methods  of  our  art  study.  For  if  oui 
professional  painters  were  likely  to  produce  pieces  of  art 
loftily  ideal  in  their  character,  it  would  be  desirable  tc 
form  the  taste  of  the  students  here  ])y  setting  before 
them    oidy    the    purest    examples    of    Greek,    and    the 


18  INAUGURAL. 

mightiest  of  Italian,  art.  But  1  do  not  tliink  you  wiL 
yet  find  a  single  instance  of  a  school  directed  exclusively 
to  these  higher  branches  of  study  in  England,  which  has 
strongly,  or  even  definitely,  made  ini]iression  on  its  younger 
scholars.  While,  therefore,  I  shall  endeavour  to  point  out 
clearly  the  characters  to  be  looked  for  and  admired  in  the 
great  masters  of  imaginative  design,  I  shall  make  no  special 
effort  to  stimulate  the  imitation  of  them ;  and,  above 
all  things,  I  shall  try  to  probe  in  you,  and  to  prevent, 
the  affectation  into  which  it  is  easy  to  fall,  even  through 
modesty, — of  either  endeavouring  to  admire  a  grandeur 
with  which  we  have  no  natural  sympathy,  or  losing  the 
pleasure  we  might  take  in  the  study  of  familiar  things, 
by  considering  it  a  sign  of  refinement  to  look  for  what 
is  of  higher  class,  or  rarer  occurrence. 

19.  Again,  if  our  artisans  were  likely  to  attain  any 
distinguished  skill  in  ornamental  design,  it  would  be  in- 
cumbent upon  me  to  make  my  class  here  accurately 
acquainted  with  the  principles  of  earth  and  metal  work, 
and  to  accustom  them  to  take  pleasure  in  conventional 
arrangements  of  colour  and  form.  I  hope,  indeed,  to  do 
this,  so  far  as  to  enable  them  to  discern  the  real  merit 
of  many  styles  of  art  which  are  at  present  neglected: 
and,  above  all,  to  read  the  minds  of  semi-barbaric  nations 
in  the  only  language  by  which  their  feelings  were  capable 
of  expression :  and  those  members  of  my  class  whose 
temper  inclines  them  to  take  pleasure  in  the  interpretation 
of  mjiihic  symbols,  will  not  probably  be  induced  to  quit 


mATJGHRAL.  1 1> 

the  profound  fields  of  investigation  ^vllich  earh'  art 
examined  carefully,  will  open  to  them,  and  which  belong 
CO  it  alone ;  for  this  is  a  general  law,  that,  supposing 
the  intellect  of  the  workman  the  same,  the  more  imita- 
tively  complete  his  art,  the  less  he  will  mean  by  it ;  ami 
the  ruder  the  symbol,  the  deeper  is  its  intention.  Never 
theless,  when  I  have  once  sufficiently  pointed  out  the 
nature  and  value  of  this  conventional  work,  and  vindicated 
it  from  the  contempt  with  which  it  is  too  generally  re 
garded,  I  shall  leave  the  student  to  his  own  pleasure  in 
its  pui*suit;  and  even,  so  far  as  I  may,  discourage  all 
admiration  founded  on  quaintness  or  peculiarity  of  style  ; 
and  repress  any  other  modes  of  feeling  which  are  likely 
to  lead  rather  to  fastidious  collection  of  curiosities,  than 
to  the  intelligent  appreciation  of  work  which,  being  exe- 
cuted in  compliance  with  constant  laws  of  right,  cannot 
be  singular,  and  must  be  distinguished  only  by  excellence 
in  what  is  always  desirable.  • 

20.  While,  therefore,  in  these  and  such  other  direc- 
tions, I  shall  endea\'our  to  put  every  adequate  means  of 
advance  within  reach  of  the  members  of  my  class,  I  shall 
nse  my  own  best  energy  to  show  them  what  is  consum- 
mately beautiful  and  well  done,  by  men  who  have  past 
through  the  symbolic  or  suggestive  stage  of  design,  and 
liave  enabled  themselves  to  comply,  by  truth  of  re- 
l)resentation,  with  the  strictest  oi-  iu<  st  eager  demands  of 
accurate  science,  and  of  dis('i})liiicd  |)ftssion.  I  shall  there- 
lore  direct  your  obsei'vation,  during  the  greater  part  <»/ 


20  INAUQI'i4AL. 

the  time  you  may  spare  to  me,  to  wliat  is  indisputably 
best,  both  in  painting  and  sculpture ;  trusting  that  yor, 
will  afterwards  recognise  the  nascent  and  partial  skill 
of  former  days  both  with  greater  interest  and  greater 
respect,  when  you  know  the  full  difficulty  of  what  it 
attempted,  and  the  complete  range  of  what  it  foretold. 
21.  And  with  this  view,  I  shall  at  once  endeavom*  to 
do  what  has  for  many  years  Ijeen  in  my  thoughts,  and 
now,  with  the  advice  and  assistance  of  the  curators  of 
the  University  Galleries,  I  do  not  doubt  may  be  accom- 
plished here  in  Oxford,  just  where  it  will  be  pre-eminently 
useful — namely,  to  arrange  an  educational  series  of  exam- 
ples of  excellent  art,  standards  to  wliich  you  may  at  once 
refer  on  any  questionable  point,  and  by  the  study  of 
which  you  may  gradually  attain  an  instinctive  sense  of 
right,  which  will  afterwards  Ijg  liable  to  no  serious  error 
Such  a  collection  may  be  formed,  both  more  perfectly, 
and  more  easily,  than  would  commonly  be  supposed.  For 
the  real  utility  of  the  series  will  depend  on  its  restricted 
extent, — on  the  severe  exclusion  of  all  second-rate,  super- 
fluous, or  e\en  attracti\i'ly  \aried  examples, — and  on 
the  confining  the  students'  attention  to  a  few  t}^es  of 
what  is  insuperably  good.  More  progress  in  power  of 
judgment  may  be  made  in  a  limited  time  by  the  ex- 
amination of  one  work,  than  by  the  review  of  many  ;  and 
a  certain  degree  of  vitality  is  given  to  the  impressiveness 
of  every  characteristic,  by  its  being  exhibited  in  clea* 
contrast,  and  without  repetition. 


INACTGUEAL.  2] 

The  greater  number  of  the  examples  1  shall  choose 
mil  at  first  not  be  costly  ;  many  of  them,  only  engravings^ 
or  photographs  :  they  shall  be  arranged  so  as  to  be  easih 
accessible,  and  I  will  prepare  a  catalogue,  pointing  out 
my  purpose  in  the  selection  of  each.  But  in  process  of 
time,  I  have  good  hope  that  assistance  will  be  given  me 
by  the  English  public  in  making  the  series  here  no  lesc 
Bplendid  than  serviceable ;  and  in  placing  minor  collec- 
tions, arranged  on  a  similar  principle,  at  the  command 
also  of  the  students  in  our  pulilic  schools. 

22.  In  the  second  place,  I  shall  endeavour  to  prevail 
upon  all  the  younger  members  of  the  University  who  wish 
to  attend  the  art  lectures,  to  give  at  least  so  much  time 
to  manual  practice  as  may  enable  them  to  understand  the 
nature  and  difficulty  of  executive  skill.  The  time  so  spent 
will  not  be  lost,  even  as  regards  their  other  studies  at 
the  University,  for  1  will  prepare  the  practical  exercise.' 
in  a  double  series,  one  illustrative  of  history,  the  othei 
'»f  natui-al  science.  And  whether  you  are  drawing  a  piece 
of  Greek  armour,  (n- a  hawk's  beak,  or  a  lion's  paw,  you 
will  find  that  the  mere  necessity  of  using  the  hand  com- 
pels attention  to  circumstances  which  would  otherwise 
have  escaped  notice,  and  fastens  them  in  the  memory 
without  farther  effort.  But  were  it  even  otherwise,  and 
this  practical  training  did  really  iuvohe  some  sacrifice  of 
your  time,  1  do  not  fear  but  (hat  it  will  be  justified  Ui 
vou  b}' its  felt  results:  and  I  tK-nk  that  general  public 
Ici-liii''    is    also    tendinis   to  tlu^    admission   that    ac(;oui 


22  mAUGDEAL. 

plislied  education  must  include,  not  only  full  command  ol 
expression  by  language,  but  comuiand  of  true  musical 
Bound  by  the  voice,  and  of  true  form  hy  the  hand. 

23.  Wliile  I  myself  hold  this  professorship,  I  shall 
direct  you  in  these  exercises  very  dehnitely  to  natural 
history,  and  to  landscape ;  not  only  because  in  these  two 
branches  I  am  probably  able  to  show  you  truths  which 
might  be  despised  by  my  successors ;  but  because  1  think 
the  vital  and  joyful-  study  of  natural  history  quite  the 
principal  element  reqniring  introduction,  not  only  into 
University,  but  into  national,  education,  fi-om  highest  to 
lowest ;  and  I  even  will  risk  incurring  your  ridicule  by 
confessing  one  of  my  fondest  dreams,  that  I  may  suc- 
ceed in  raaldng  some  of  you  English  yonths  like  better 
to  look  at  a  bird  than  to  shoot  it ;  and  even  desire  to 
make  wild  creatnres  tame,  insteftd  of  tame  creatures  wild. 
And  for  the  stndy  of  landscape,  it  is,  I  think,  now  cal- 
culated to  be  of  use  in  deeper,  if  not  more  important 
modes,  than  that  of  natural  science,  for  reasons  which  1 
will  ask  you  to  let  me  state  at  some  length. 

24.  Observe  first; — no  race  of  men  which  is  entirely 
bred  in  wild  country,  far  from  cities,  ever  enjoys  land- 
scape. They  may  enj  oy  the  beauty  of  animals,  but  scarcely 
even  that :  a  true  peasant  cannot  see  the  beauty  of  cattle  ; 
but  only  the  qualities  expressive  of  their  serviceableness 
I  waive  discussion  of  this  to-day;  permit  my  assertion 
of  it,  under  my  confidant  guarantee  of  future  proof 
Landscape  <an  only  be   enjoyed   by   cultivated   persons* 


INAITGURAL.  23 

and  it  is  only  by  music,  literature,  and  painting,  that 
cultivation  can  be  given.  Also,  the  fivcultics  wiiicli 
are  thus  received  are  hereditary;  so  that  the  child  of 
an  educated  race  has  an  innate  instinct  for  beauty, 
derived  fi'om  arts  practised  hundreds  of  years  before  i\s 
bii-th.  Now  farther  note  this,  one  of  the  loveliest  things 
in  human  nature.  In  the  children  of  noble  races,  trained 
by  surrounding  art,  and  at  the  same  time  in  the  pi-ac- 
tice  of  great  deeds,  there  is  an  intense  delight  in  the 
landscape  of  their  country  as  ■memorial;  a  sense  not 
taught  to  them,  nor  teachable  to  any  others;  but,  in 
them,  innate ;  and  the  seal  and  reward  of  persistence  in 
great  national  life  ; — the  obedience  and  the  peace  of  ages 
having  extended  gradually  the  glory  of  the  revered 
ancestors  also  to  the  ancestral  land ;  until  the  Motherhood 
of  the  dust,  the  mystery  of  the  Demeter  from  whose 
bosom  we  came,  and  to  whose  bosom  we  return,  surrounds 
and  inspires,  everywhere,  the  local  awe  of  held  and  foun- 
tain; the  sacredness  of  landmark  that  none  niay  remove, 
and  of  wave  that  none  may  })ollute ;  while  records  of 
proud  days,  and  of  dear  persons,  make  every  rock  monu- 
mental with  ghostly  inscription,  and  every  ]»ath  lo\ely 
with  noble  desolateness. 

25.  Now,  however  checked  by  tightness  of  tempera- 
ment, the  instinctive  love  of  landscjape  in  us  lias  this 
deep  root,  wliich,  in  your  minds,  I  will  pray  you  to  dis- 
encinnber  from  whatever  may  oppress  or  mortify  it,  and 
to   strive    to    feel    with    all   the  stieugth    of   your  youth 


24  INAUGURAL. 

that  a  nation  is  only  worthy  of  the  soil  and  the  scenes 
that  it  has  inherited,  when,  by  all  its  acts  and  arts,  it 
is  raakinaj  them  more  lovely  for  its  children. 

And  now,  I  trust,  you  will  feel  that  it  is  not  in  mere 
yielding  to  my  own  fancies  that  1  have  chosen,  for  the 
first  three  subjects  in  your  educational  series,  landscape 
scenes ; — two  in  England,  and  one  iu  Fi-ance, — the  asso- 
,j;iation  of  these  being  not  without  purpose: — and  for  the 
fourth,  Albert  Durers  dream  of  the  Spirit  of  Labour. 
And  of  the  landscape  subjects,  1  must  tell  you  this 
much.  The  first  is  an  engraving  only ;  the  original 
drawing  by  Turner  was  destroyed  by  fire  twenty  years 
ago.  For  which  loss  I  wish  you  to  be  sorry,  and  to 
remember,  in  connection  with  this  first  exainple,  that 
whatever  remains  to  us  of  possession  in  the  arts  is, 
compared  to  what  we  might  have  had  if  we  had  cared 
for  them,  just  what  that  engraving  is  to  the  lost  drawing. 
You  will  find  also  that  its  subject  has  meaning  in  it 
which  will  not  be  harmful  to  you.  The  second  example 
is  a  real  drawing  by  Turner,  in  the  same  series,  and  very 
nearly  of  the  same  place ;  the  two  scenes  are  within  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  of  each  other.  It  will  show  you  the 
character  of  the  work  that  was  destroyed.  It  will  show 
yon,  in  process  of  time,  much  more;  but  chiefiy,  and 
this  is  my  main  reason  for  choosing  both,  it  will  be  a 
permanent  expression  to  you  of  what  English  landscape  was 
once; — and  must,  if  we  are  to  remain  a  nation,  be  again. 

I  think  it  farther  right  to  tell  you,  for  otherwise  you 


ESTAUGITKAL.  25 

might  hardly  pay  reo;ard  eiiougli  to  work  apparently  »* 
simple,  that  by  a  chance  which  is  not  altogether  dis- 
pleasing to  me,  this  drawing,  which  it  has  become,  foi 
tliese  reasons,  necessary  for  me  to  give  you,  is  —  not 
indeed  the  best  I  have,  (I  have  several  as  good,  though 
none  better)  —  but,  of  all  I  have,  the  one  1  had  least 
mind  to  part  with. 

The  third  example  is  also  a  Turner  drawing — a  scene 
on  the  Loire — never  engraved.  It  is  an  introduction  to 
the  series  of  the  Loire,  which  you  have  already ;  it  has 
in  its  present  place  a  due  concurrence  with  the  expi-cs- 
sional  purpose  of  its  companions;  and  though  small,  it 
is  very  precious,  being  a  faultless,  and,  1  believe,  uusur 
passable  example  of  water-colour  painting. 

Chiefly,  however,  rememljer  the  object  of  these  three 
tiret  examples  is  to  give  you  an  index  to  your  truest 
feelings  about  European,  and  es})ecially  about  your  native 
landscape,  as  it  is  pensive  and  historical;  and  so  far  as 
you  yourselves  make  any  effort  at  its  representation,  to 
give  you  a  motive  for  fidelity  in  handwork  more  ani 
mating  than  any  connected  with  mere  success  in  the  'dvt 
itself. 

26.  With  respect  to  actual  methods  of  practice  I  will 
not  incur  the  responsibility  of  detei-mining  them  for  you. 
We  will  take  Lionanlo's  treatise  on  ti-aining  for  our  fii-st 
text-book;  and  1  think  you  need  not  fear  being  misled 
by  me  if  I  ask  you  to  do  only  what  Lionardo  bids,  or 

what  will  be  necessary  to  cuaMc  \(iu  to  do  his  biddin^r. 

9, 


26  '  INAUGURAL. 

But  yon  need  not  possess  the  book,  nor  read  it  throvigk 
1  will  translate  the  pieces  to  the  anthority  of  which  ] 
sliall  appeal ;  and,  in  process  of  time,  by  analysis  of  this 
fragmentary  treatise,  show  you  some  characters  not  usually 
understood  of  the  simplicity  as  well  as  subtlety  com- 
mon to  most  great  workmen  of  that  age.  Afterwards 
we  will  collect  the  instructions  of  other  undisputed 
masters,  till  we  have  obtained  a  code  of  laws  clearly 
resting  on  the  consent  of  antiquity. 

Wliile,  however,  I  thus  in  some  measure  limit  for  the 
present  the  methods  of  your  practice,  I  shall  endeavour 
to  make  the  courses  of  niy  University  lectures  as  wide  in 
their  range  as  my  knowledge  will  permit.  The  range 
30  conceded  will  be  narrow  enough;  but  I  believe  that 
my  proper  function  is  not  to  acquaint  you  with  the 
general  history,  but  with  the  essential  principles  of  art ; 
and  with  its  history  only  when  it  has  been  both  great 
and  good,  or  where  some  special  excellence  of  it  requires 
examination  of  the  causes  to  which  it  must  be  ascribed. 

27.  But  if  either  our  work,  or  our  enquiries,  are  to 
be  indeed  successful  in  their  own  field,  they  must  be 
connected  with  others  of  a  sterner  character.  Now  listen 
to  me,  if  I  have  in  these  past  details  lost  or  burdened 
y(nir  attention ;  for  this  is  what  I  have  chiefly  to  say  to 
you.  The  art  of  any  country  is  the  exponent  of  its 
eiocial  and  political  virtues.  I  will  show  you  that  it  is 
■*o  in  some  detail,  in  the  second  of  my  subsequent  course 
of  lec'nres;  moantinie  accept  this  as  one  of  tie  things, 


INATJGUEAL.  27 

and  the  most  important  of  all  things,  I  can  positively 
declare  to  yon.  The  art,  or  general  productive  and  forma- 
tive energy,  of  any  country,  is  an  exact  exponent  of  ita 
ethical  life.  You  can  have  noble  art  only  from  noble 
pei-sons,  associated  under  laws  fitted  to  their  time  and 
circumstances.  And  the  best  skill  that  any  teacher  of 
art  could  spend  hei'e  in  your  help,  would  not  end  in 
enabling  you  even  so  much  as  rightly  to  draw  the 
water-lilies  in  the  Cherwell  (and  though  it  did,  the 
work  when  done  would  not  be  worth  the  lilies  them- 
selves) unless  both  he  and  you  were  seeking,  as  I  trust 
we  shall  together  seek,  in  the  laws  which  regulate  the 
finest  industries,  the  clue  to  the  laws  which  regulate  all 
industries,  and  in  better  obedience  to  which  we  shaL 
actually  have  henceforward  to  live,  not  merely  in  com- 
pliance with  our  own  sense  of  what  is  right,  but  under 
tlie  weight  of  quite  literal  necessity.  For  the  trades  by 
which  the  British  people  has  believed  it  to  be  the  highest 
of  destinies  to  maintain  itself,  cannot  now  long  remain 
undisputed  in  its  hands;  its  unemployed  poor  are  daily 
becoming  more  violentl}^  criminal ;  and  a  searching  dis- 
tress in  the  middle  classes,  arising  partly  from  their 
vanity  in  living  always  up  to  their  incomes,  and  partly 
from  their  folly  in  imagining  that  they  can  subsist  in 
idleness  upon  usury,  will  at  last  compel  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  English  families  to  accpiaint  themselves 
with  the  principles  of  providential  economy;  and  tc 
learn    tliat    food   can   only    be   got   out   of   the   gnuiiKl, 


S!o  INAUGURAL. 

and  competence  only  secured  by  frugality ;  and  that 
although  it  is  not  possible  for  all  to  be  occupied  in 
the  highest  arts,  nor  for  any,  guiltlessly,  to  pass  their 
days  in  a  succession  of  pleasures,  the  most  perfect  mental 
culture  possible  to  men  is  founded  on  their  useful 
ei  ergies,  and  their  best  arts  and  brightest  happiness 
are  consistent,  and  consistent  only,  with  their  virtue. 

28.  This  I  repeat,  gentlemen,  will  soon  become  mani- 
fest to  those  among  us,  and  there  are  yet  many,  who 
are  honest-hearted.  And  the  future  fate  of  England 
depends  upon  the  position  they  then  take,  and  on  their 
couraore  in  maintaining  it. 

There  is  a  destiny  now  possible  to  us — the  highest 
ever  set  before  a  nation  to  be  accepted  or  refused.  We 
are  still  undegenerate  in  race ;  a  race  mingled  of  the 
l^est  northern  blood.  We  are  not  yet  dissolute  in  temper, 
but  still  have  the  firmness  to  govern,  and  the  grace  to 
obey.  We  have  been  taught  a  religion  of  pure  mercy, 
which  we  must  either  now  finally  betray,  or  learn  to 
defend  by  fulfilling.  And  we  are  rich  in  an  inheritance 
of  honour,  bequeathed  to  us  through  a  thousand  years  of 
noble  history,  which  it  should  be  our  daily  thirst  to 
increase  with  splendid  a^'arice,  so  that  Englishmen,  if  it 
be  a  sin  to  covet  honour,  should  be  the  most  offending 
louls  alive.  Within  the  last  few  years  we  have  had  the 
aws  of  natural  science  opened  to  us  with  a  rapidity 
which  has  been  blinding  by  its  brightness ;  and  meang 
of  transit  and  communication   given  to   us,  which  have 


INAUGURAL.  29 

made  but  one  kingdom  of  the  habitable  globe.  One 
kingdom; — but  Avho  is  to  be  its  king?  Is  there  to  be 
no  king  in  it,  think  you,  and  every  man  to  do  that 
which  is  right  in  his  own  eyes?  Or  only  kings  of 
terror,  and  the  obscene  empires  of  Mammon  and  Belial '( 
(Jr  will  you,  youths  of  England,  make  your  comitry  again 
a  royal  throne  of  kings ;  a  sceptred  isle,  for  all  the  woj-lJ 
a  source  of  light,  a  centre  of  peace  ;  mistress  of  Learning 
and  of  the  Arts ; — faithful  guardian  of  great  memories 
in  the  midst  of  irreverent  and  ephemeral  visions ; — faith- 
ful servant  of  time-tried  principles,  under  temptation 
from  fond  experiments  and  licentious  desires  ;  and,  amidst 
the  cruel  and  clamorous  jealousies  of  the  nations,  Avor- 
shipped  in  her  strange  valour,  of  goodwill  towards  men  ? 

29.  '  Vexilla  regis  prodeunt.'  Yes,  but  of  which  king  ? 
There  are  the  two  oriflammes ;  which  shall  we  plaiit  07i 
the  farthest  islands — the  one  that  floats  in  heavenly  fire, 
or  that  hangs  heavy  with  foul  tissue  of  terrestrial  gold  ? 
There  is  indeed  a  course  of  beneficent  glory  open  to 
us,  such  as  ne\'er  was  yet  offered  to  any  poor  group  of 
mortal  souls.  But  it  must  be — it  is  with  us,  now,  '  Keign 
i/r  Die.'  And  if  it  shall  be  said  of  this  country,  '  Fecc 
per  viltate,  il  gran  rifiuto ; '  that  refusal  of  the  crown  will 
be,  of  all  yet  recorded  in  liistt)ry,  the  shamefuUest  and 
most  untimely. 

And  this  is  what  she  must  either  do,  or  perish  :  she 
must  found  colonies  as  fast  and  as  far  as  she  is  able, 
fonned  of  her  most  energetic  and  worthiest  men  ; — seizing 


30  mAUG  URAL. 

every  piece  of  fruitful  waste  ground  she  can  set  her  fool 

on,  and  there  teaching  these  her  colonists  that  their  chiei 
N'irtue  is  to  be  fidelity  to  their  country,  and  that  their 
first  aim  is  to  be  to  advance  the  power  of  England  by 
land  and  sea:  and  that,  though  they  live  on  a  distant 
plot  of  ground,  they  ai"e  no  moi'e  to  consider  themselves 
therefore  disfranchised  from  their  native  land  than  tho 
sailors  of  her  fleets  do,  because  they  float  on  distant 
waves.  So  that  literally,  these  colonies  must  be  fastened 
fleets,  and  every  man  of  them  must  be  under  authority 
of  captains  and  officers,  whose  better  command  is  to  be 
over  fields  and  streets  instead  of  ships  of  the  line ;  and 
England,  in  these  her  motionless  navies  (or,  in  the  true 
and  mightiest  sense,  motionless  churches,  ruled  by  pilots 
on  the  Galilean  lake  of  all  the  world)  is  to  '  expect  every 
man  to  do  his  duty ; '  recognising  that  duty  is  indeed 
possible  no  less  in  peace  than  war;  and  that  if  we  can 
get  men,  for  little  pay,  to  cast  themselves  against  cannon- 
mouths  for  love  of  England,  we  may  find  men  also  who 
will  plough  and  sow  for  her,  who  will  behave  kindly  and 
righteously  for  her,  who  will  bring  up  their  children  to 
love  her,  and  who  will  gladden  themselves  in  the  bright- 
ness of  her  glory,  more  than  in  all  Jhe  light  of  tropic 
skies. 

But  that  they  may  be  able  to  do  this,  she  must  mate 
her  own  majesty  stainless ;  she  must  give  them  thoughts 
cf  their  home  of  which  they  can  be  proud.  The  England 
who  is  to  be  mistress  of  half  the  earth   cannot  remain 


mAUGUEAL.  3] 

herself  a  heap  of  cinders,  trampled  I)y  contending  ami 
miserable  crowds ;  she  must  yet  again  become  the  England 
she  was  once,  and  in  all  beautiful  ways  more ;  so  happy, 
BO  secluded,  and  so  pure,  that  in  her  sky — polluted  by  no 
unholy  clouds — she  may  be  able  to  spell  rightly  of  every 
star  that  heaven  doth  show ;  and  in  her  fields,  ordered 
and  wide  and  fair,  of  every  herb  that  sips  the  dew ;  and 
under  the  green  avenues  of  her  eiu^hanted  garden,  a  sacred 
Circe,  true  Daughter  of  the  Sun,  she  must  guide  the 
human  arts,  and  gather  the  divine  knowledge,  of  distant 
nations,  transformed  from  savageness  to  manhood,  and 
redeemed  from  despairing  into  Peace. 

30.  You  think  that  an  impossible  ideal.  Be  it  so ; 
refuse  to  accept  it  if  you  will ;  but  see  that  you  form 
your  own  in  its  stead.  All  that  I  ask  of  you  is  to  have 
a  fixed  purpose  of  some  kind  for  your  country  and  your- 
selves ;  no  matter  how  restricted,  so  that  it  be  fixed  and 
unselfish.  I  know  what  stout  hearts  are  in  you,  to 
answer  acknowledged  need ;  but  it  is  the  fatallest  form  of 
error  in  English  youth  to  hide  their  best  hardihood  till 
it  fades  for  lack  of  sunshine,  and  to  act  in  disdain  of 
purpose,  till  all  purpose  is  vain.  It  is  not  by  deliberate, 
but  by  careless  selfishness;  not  by  compromise  with  evil, 
but  by  dull  following  of  good,  that  the  weight  of  national 
evil  increases  upon  us  daily.  Ihcak  through  at  least 
this  pretence  of  existence;  determine  what  you  will  be, 
and  what  you  would  win.  You  will  not  decide  wrongly 
if  you  resolve  to  decide  at  all.      Were  even  tiie  choice 


S2  INAUGUEAL. 

between  lawless  pleasure  and  loyal  suffering,  you  ^vould 
not,  I  believe,  choose  basely.  But  your  trial  is  not  so 
sharj).  It  is  between  drifting  in  confused  wreck  among 
the  castaways  of  Fortune,  who  condemns  to  assured  ruin 
those  who  know  not  either  how  to  resist  her,  or  obey; 
between  this,  I  say,  and  the  taking  your  appointed  part 
in  the  heroism  of  Kest ;  the  resolving  to  share  in  the 
victory  which  is  to  the  weak  rather  than  the  strong ; 
and  the  binding  yourselves  by  that  law,  which,  thouglit 
on  through  lingering  night  and  labouring  day,  makes  a 
man's  life  to  be  as  a  tree  planted  by  the  water-side,  thai 
bringeth  forth  his  fruit  in  his  season  ; — 

*  ET  FOLIUM  EJUS  NON  DEFLUET, 
BT  OICNIA,  QU^iOUNQUE  FACIET,  PKOSPtfKABUWTDB.' 


^tctnxt   2. 


7 SB  RELATION   OF  ART   TO  RKLIGION. 


THE  RELATION   OP  ART   TO   RELIOION. 

31.  It  was  stated,  and  I  trust  partly  with  your  ao 
ceptanoe,  in  my  opening  lecture,  that  the  study  on  whict 
we  are  about  to  enter  cannot  be  rightly  undertaken  ex 
cept  in  furtherance  of  the  grave  purposes  of  life  with 
respect  to  which  the  rest  of  the  scheme  of  your  educa- 
tion here  is  designed.  But  you  can  scarcely  nave  at 
once  felt  all  that  I  intended  in  saying  so ; — you  can- 
not but  be  still  partly  under  the  impression  that  the  so- 
called  fine  arts  are  merely  modes  of  graceful  recreation, 
and  a  new  resource  for  your  times  of  rest.  Let  me  ask 
you,  forthwith,  so  far  as  you  can  trust  me,  to  change 
your  thoughts  in  this  matter.  All  the  great  arts  have 
for  their  object  either  the  support  or  exaltation  of  human 
life, — usually  both ;  and  their  dignity,  and  ultimately 
their  very  existence,  depend  on  their  being  '  n-^rk  xoy»v 
iAjjfloSj,'  that  is  to  say,  apprehending,  with  right  reason, 
the  nature  of  the  materials  they  work  with,  of  the 
things  they  relate  or  represent,  and  of  the  faculties  to 
which  they  are  addressed.  And  farther,  they  form  one 
united  system  from  whicli  it  is  impossible  to  remove  any 


36  THE   RELATION    OF 

part  without  harm  to  tlie  i-est.  They  are  founded  first  in 
iiiastei  J,  by  strength  of  ann,  of  the  earth  and  sea,  in  agri 
culture  and  seamanship;  then  their  inventiye  power  begins, 
with  the  chiy  in  the  hand  of  the  potter,  whose  art  is- 
the  humblest,  but  truest  type  of  the  forming  of  the  human 
body  and  spirit;  and  in  the  carpenter's  work,  which 
ju-obably  was  the  early  employment  of  the  Founder  of 
our  religion.  And  until  men  have  perfectly  leai-ned  the 
laws  of  art  in  clay  and  wood,  they  can  consummately 
know  no  others.  ISTor  is  it  Avithout  the  strauire  siirnifi- 
cance  which  you  Mall  find  in  what  at  first  seemed  chance, 
in  all  noble  histories,  as  soon  as  j'ou  can  read  them 
rightly^ — that  the  statue  of  Athena  Polias  was  of  olive- 
wood,  and  that  the  Greek  temple  and  Gotblr  spire  are 
both  merely  the  perraaaent  representations  of  useful 
wooden  structures.  On  these  two  first  arts  follow  build- 
ing in  stone, — sculpture, — metal  work, — and  painting; 
every  art  being  properly  called  '  fine '  which  demands 
the  exercise  of  the  full  faculties  of  heart  and  intellect. 
For  though  the  fine  arts  are  not  necessarily  imitative  or 
representative,  for  their  essence  is  being  '■Trsp/  ^s'vstfiv' — 
occupied  in  the  actual  production  of  beautiful  form  or 
coloiu' — still,  the  highest  of  them  are  appointed  also  to 
relate  to  us  the  utmost  ascertainable  truth  respecting 
visible  things  and  moral  feelings  :  and  this  pursuit  f»f 
fact  is  the  vital  element  of  the  art  power ; — that  in 
^hich  alone  it  can  develope  itself  to  its  utmost.  And  I 
will  anticipate  by  an  assertion  which  you  will  at  presei^t 


ART    rO    RELIGION.  37 

think  too  bold,  but  which  1  am  wiiliiio-  that  you  should 
thiiik  so,  in  order  that  you  may  well  remember  it, — the 
highest  thing  that  art  can  do  is  to  set  befoi-e  you  the 
true  image  of  the  presence  of  a  noble  liuman  being. 
It  has  never  done  more  than  this,  and  it  ought  not  to 
do  less. 

32.  The  great  arts — forming  thus  one  perfect  scheme 
of  human  skill,  of  which  it  is  not  right  to  call  one 
division  more  honourable,  though  it  may  be  more  suj)tle, 
than  another — have  had,  and  can  have,  but  three  prin- 
cipal directions  of  purpose: — first,  that  of  enforcing 
the  religion  of  men  ;  secondly,  that  of  perfecting  their 
ethical  state ;  thirdly,  that  of  doing  them  material  ser- 
\dce. 

33.  I  do  not  doubt  but  that  you  are  surprised  at 
my  saying  the  arts  can  in  their  second  function  only  lie 
directed  to  the  perfecting  of  ethical  state,  it  being  our 
usual  impression  that  tliey  are  often  destructive  of 
morality.  But  it  is  impossible  to  direct  fine  art  to  an 
immoral  end,  except  by  giving  it  characters  unconnected 
with  its  fineness,  or  by  addressing  it  to  persons  who 
cannot  perceive  it  to  be  fine.  Whosoever  recognises  it 
is  exalted  by  it.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  com- 
monly thouglit  that  art  was  a  most  fitting  means  for 
Ihe  enforcement  of  religious  doctrines  and  emotions; 
whereas  there  is,  as  I  must  presently  try  to  show  you_ 
room  for  grave  donbt  whether  it  has  not  in  this  function 
hitherto  done  evil  rather  than  <rood. 


88  THE   RELATION   OF 

34.  In  this  and  the  two  next  following  lectures,  i 
shall  endeavour  therefore  to  show  you  the  grave  relationa 
of  human  art,  in  these  three  finictrms,  to  human  life. 
I  can  do  this  but  roughly,  as  you  may  well  suppose — 
since  each  of  these  subjects  would  require  for  its  right 
treatment  years  instead  of  hours.  Only,  remember,  J 
have  already  given  years,  not  a  few,  to  each  of  them ; 
and  what  I  try  to  tell  you  now  will  be  only  so  much  as 
is  absolutely  necessary  to  set  our  w^ork  on  a  clear  founda- 
tion. You  may  not,  at  present,  see  the  necessity  for 
any  foundation,  and  may  think  that  I  ought  to  put 
pencil  and  paper  in  your  hands  at  once.  On  that  point 
I  must  simply  answer,  '  Trust  me  a  little  while,'  asking 
you  however  also  to  remember,  that — irrespectively  of 
what  you  do  last  or  first — my  true  function  here  is  not 
that  of  your  master  in  painting,  or  sculpture,  or  pottery ; 
but  my  real  duty  is  to  show  you  what  it  is  that  makes 
any  of  these  arts  fine,  or  the  contrary  of  fine  ;  essen- 
tially good,  or  essentially  base.  You  need  not  fear  my 
not  being  practical  enough  for  you;  ail  the  industry 
you  choose  to  give  me  1  will  take;  but  far  the  better 
part  of  what  you  may  gain  by  such  industry  would  be 
lost,  if  I  did  not  fii-st  lead  you  to  see  what  every  form 
of  art-industry  intends,  and  why  some  of  it  is  justly 
called  right,  and  some  wrong. 

35.  It  would  be  well  if  you  weve  to  look  over^  with 
respect  to  this  matter,  the  end  of  the  second,  and  what 
mterests  yon  of  the  third  j)ook  of  PI  -to's  Eepublie ;  noting 


AKT    TO    RELIGION.  39 

therein  these  t^^o  principal  things,  of  wliich  I  have  tc 
speak  in  this  and  my  next  lecture :  first,  the  power  which 
Plato  so  frankly,  and  quite  justly,  attributes  to  art,  of 
falsifying  our  conceptions  of  Deity  :  which  power  he  by 
fatal  error  partly  implies  may  be  used  wisely  for  good, 
and  that  the  feigning  is  only  wrong  when  it  is  of 
evil,  '  (if  rii  fui  xuxZi  -il^euSuTxi  ; '  and  you  may  trace 
through  all  that  folhnvs  the  beginning  of  the  change 
of  Greek  ideal  art  into  a  beautiful  expediency,  instead 
of  what  it  was  in  the  days  of  Pindar,  the  statement  of 
what  '  could  not  be  otherwise  than  so.'  But,  in  the 
second  place,  you  will  find  in  those  books  of  the  Polity, 
stated  with  far  greater  accuracy  of  expression  than  our 
English  language  admits,  the  essential  relations  of  art 
to  morality ;  the  sum  of  these  being  given  in  one  lovely 
sentence,  which,  considering  that  we  have  to-day  grace 
done  us  by  fair  companionship,  you  will  pardon  me  for 
translating,  'Must  it  be  then  only  with  our  poets  that 
we  insist  they  shall  either  create  for  us  the  image  of 
a  noble  morality,  or  among  us  create  none  i  or  shall  we 
not  also  keep  guard  over  all  other  workers  for  the  people, 
and  forbid  them  to  make  what  is  ill- customed,  and  un- 
restrained, and  ungentle,  and  without  order  or  shape, 
either  in  likenesses  of  living  things,  or  in  buildings,  or 
in  any  other  thing  whatsoever  that  is  made  for  the 
people  ?  and  sliall  we  not  rather  seek  for  workers  who 
can  track  the  inner  nature  of  all  that  may  be  sweetly 
?chcmnd ;  so  that  the  young  men,  as  li^^ng  in  a  whole- 


id  THE   RELATION   OF 

some  place,  may  be  profited  by  everything  thai,  in  w(a'i 
fairly  wrought,  may  touch  them  through  hearing  oi 
sight — as  if  it  were  a  breeze  bringing  health  to  thera 
from  places  strong  for  life  ? ' 

36.  And  now — but  one  word,  before  we  enter  on  our 
t-ask,  as  to  the  way  you  must  understand  what  I  may 
endeavour  to  tell  you. 

Let  me  beg  you — now  and  always — not  to  think  that 
1  mean  more  than  I  say.  In  all  probability,  I  mean 
just  what  I  say,  and  only  that.  At  all  events  I  do 
fully  mean  that,  and  if  there  is  anything  reserved  in 
my  mind,  it  will  be  probably  different  from  what  you 
would  guess.  You  are  perfectly  welcome  to  know  all 
that  I  think,  as  soon  as  I  have  put  before  you  all  my 
grounds  for  thinking  it ;  but  by  the  time  I  have  done 
so,  you  will  be  able  to  form  an  opinion  of  your  own  ; 
and  mine  will  then  be  of  no  consequence  to  you. 

3Y.  I  use  then  to-day,  as  I  shall  in  future  use,  the 
word  '  religion '  as  signifying  the  feelings  of  love,  reve- 
rence, or  dread  wuth  which  the  human  mind  is  affected 
by  its  conceptions  of  spiritual  being;  and  you  know 
well  how  necessary  it  is,  both  to  the  rightness  of  our 
own  life,  and  to  the  understanding  the  lives  of  othere, 
that  we  should  always  keep  clearly  distinguished  our  ideas 
of  religion,  as  thus  defined,  and  of  morality,  as  the  law 
of  rightness  in  human  conduct.  For  there  are  many 
religions,  but  there  is  only  one  morality.  There  are 
moral  and   immoral  reli<rions,  which  differ  as  much  ir 


AKT   TO   RELIGION.  43 

precept  as  in  emotion ;  but  there  is  only  one  morality, 
which  has  been,  is,  and  must  be  for  ever,  an  instinct  in 
the  hearts  of  all  civilized  men,  as  certain  and  unalter- 
able as  their  outward  bodily  form,  and  which  receives 
from  reHgion  neither  law,  nor  peace ;  but  only  hope,  ard 
felicity. 

38.  The  pure  forms  or  states  of  religion  hitherto 
known,  are  those  in  which  a  healthy  humanity,  finding 
in  itself  many  foibles  and  sins,  has  imagined,  or  been 
made  conscious  of,  the  existence  of  higher  spiritnal  per- 
sonality, liable  to  no  such  fault  or  stain ;  and  has  been 
assisted  in  effort,  and  consoled  in  pain,  by  reference  to 
the  will  or  sympathy  of  such  more  pure  spirits,  •whether 
imagined  or  real.  I  am  compelled  to  use  these  painful 
latitudes  of  expression,  because  no  analysis  has  hitherto 
sufficed  to  distinguish  accurately,  in  historical  narrative, 
the  difference  between  impressions  resulting  fi-om  the 
imagination  of  the  worshipper,  and  those  made,  if  any. 
by  the  actually  local  and  temporary  presence  of  another 
spirit.  For  instance,  take  the  vision,  which  of  all 
others  has  been  since  made  most  frequently  the  sub- 
ject of  physical  representation — the  appearance  to  Eze- 
kiel  and  St.  John  of  the  four  living  creatures,  which 
throughout  Christendom  have  been  used  to  symbolize 
the  Evangehsts.*  Supposing  such  interpretation  just, 
one  of  those  figures  was  either  the  mere  symbol  to 
8t.  John  'of  himself,  or  it  was  the  power  which  inspired 

*  Only  the  Gospels,  TV.  Evangelia,'  according  to  St.  Jerome. 


42  ~  THE    KELA.TION    OF 

him  manifestinfij  itself  in  an  independent  form.  Which 
of  these  it  was,  or  whether  neither  of  these,  but  a 
vision  of  other  powers,  or  a  dream,  of  which  neither 
the  prophet  himself  knew,  nor  can  any  other  person 
yet  know,  the  intei'pretation,  I  suppose  no  modestly- 
tempered  and  accnrate  thinker  would  now  take  upo7i 
himself  to  decide.  Nor  is  it  therefore  anywise  necessary 
for  you  to  decide  on  that,  or  any  other  such  question  : 
but  it  is  necessary  that  you  should  be  bold  enough  to 
look  every  opposing  questioii  steadily  in  its  face ;  and 
modest  enough,  having  done  so,  to  know  when  it  is 
too  hard  for  you.  But  above  all  things,  see  that  you 
be  modest  in  your  thoughts,  for  of  this  one  thing  we 
may  be  absolutely  sure,  that  all  our  thoughts  are  but 
degrees  of  darkness.  And  in  these  days  you  have  to 
guard  against  the  fatailest  darkness  of  the  two  opposite 
Prides :  the  Pride  of  Faith,  which  imagines  that  the 
Nature  of  the  Deity  can  be  defined  by  its  convictions  ; 
and  the  Pride  of  Science,  wliich  imagines  that  the 
Energy  of  Deity  can  be  explained  by  its  analysis. 

39.  Of  these,  the  first,  the  Pride  of  Faith,  is  now, 
as  it  has  been  always,  the  most  deadly,  because  the 
most  complacent  and  subtle; — because  it  invests  every 
evil  passion  of  our  nature  with  the  aspect  of  an  angel 
of  hght,  and  enables  the  self-love,  which  might  other- 
wise have  been  put  to  wholesome  shame,  and  the  cruel 
vtarelessness  of  the  ruin  of  our  fellow-men,  which  might 
othei-wise  liave  been  warmed  into  human  love,  or  at  least 


•      ART   TO    RELIGION.  43 

checked  by  human  intelligence,  to"  congeal  themsehes 
into  the  mortal  intellectual  disease  of  imao-inino'  that 
myriads  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  world  for  four  thousand 
yeai-s  have  been  left  to  wander  and  perish,  many  of 
them  everlastingly,  in  order  that,  in  fulness  of  time,  divine 
truth  might  be  preached  sufficiently  to  ourselves  ;  with 
this  farther  ineffable  mischief  for  direct  result,  that  mul- 
titudes of  kindly-disposed,  gentle,  and  submissive  persons^ 
who  might  else  by  their  true  patience  have  alloyed  the 
hardness  of  the  common  crowd,  and  by  their  activity  for 
good,  balanced  its  misdoing,  are  withdrawn  from  all  such 
true  ser\-ice  of  man,  that  they  may  pass  the  best  part  of 
their  lives  in  what  they  are  told  is  the  ser\4ce  of  God  ; 
namely,  desiring  what  they  cannot  obtain,  lamenting  what 
they  cannot  avoid,  and  reflecting  on  what  they  cannot 
understand. 

40.  This,  I  repeat,  is  the  deadliest,  but  for  you, 
under  existing  circumstances,  it  is  becoming  daily,  almost 
hourly,  the  least  probable  form  of  Pride.  That  which 
you  have  chiefly  to  guard  against  consists  in  the  over- 
valuing of  minute  though  correct  discovery ;  the  ground- 
less denial  of  all  that  seems  to  you  to  liave  beeii 
groundlessly  affirmed  ;  and  the  interesting  yourselves  too 
curionsly  in  the  ])rogress  of  some  scientific  minds,  which 
in  their  jndgment  of  the  universe  can  be  compared  to 
nothing  so  accurately  as  to  the  woodworms  in  the  I'anel 
of  a  picture  by  some  gicat  painter,  if  we  may  con^ 
ocive  thcni   as  tastin^•  witli  dificriniination  of  the  wotxl 


44  THE    RELATION   OF 

and  with  repugnance  of  the  colour,  and  declaring  that 
even  this  unlooked-for  and  undesirable  combination  is  a 
normal  result  of  the  action  of  molecular  Forces. 

41.  ISTow,  I  must  very  earnestly  warn  you,  in  the 
beginning  of  my  work  with  you  here,  against  allowing 
either  of  these  forms  of  egotism  to  interfere  with  your 
judgment  or  practice  of  art.  On  the  one  hand,  you 
must  not  allow  the  expression  of  your  own  favourite 
religious  feelings  by  any  particular  form  of  art  to  mod- 
ify your  judgment  of  its  absolute  merit ;  nor  allow  the 
art  itself  to  become  an  illegitimate  means  of  deepening 
and  confirming  your  convictions,  by  realizing  to  your 
eyes  what  you  dimly  conceive  with  the  brain;  as  if  the 
greater  clearness  of  the  image  were  a  stronger  proof  of 
its  truth.  On  the  other  hand,  you  must  not  allow  your 
scientific  habit  of  trusting  nothing  but  what  you  have 
ascertained,  to  prevent  you  from  appreciating,  or  at  least 
endeavouring  to  qualify  yourselves  to  appreciate,  the 
work  of  the  highest  faculty  of  the  human  mind, — its 
imagination, — when  it  is  toiling  in  the  presence  of  things 
that  cannot  be  dealt  with  by  any  other  power. 

42.  These  are  both  vital  conditions  of  your  healthy 
progress.  On  the  one  hand,  observe  that  you  do  not 
wilfully  use  the  realistic  power  of  art  to  convince  your- 
selves of  historical  or  theological  statements  which  you 
cannot  otherwise  prove ;  and  which  you  wish  to  prove : 
— on  the  other  hand,  that  you  do  not  check  your  imagi- 
nation and  conscience  while  seizing  the  truths  of  which 


ART   TO    RELIGION.  45 

tluiy  alone  are  cognizant,  because  you  value  too  higWv 
the  scientific  interest  which  attaches  to  the  investigatior 
of  second  causes. 

For  instance,  it  may  he  quite  possible  to  show  the 
conditions  in  water  and  electricity  which  necessarily  pro- 
duce the  craggy  outline,  the  apparently  self-contained 
silvery  light,  and  the  sulphurous  blue  shadow  of  a 
thunder-cloud,  and  which  separate  these  from  the  depth 
of  the  golden  peace  in  the  dawn  of  a  summer  morning. 
Similarly,  it  may  be  possible  to  show  the  necessities  of 
structure  which  gr(.)ove  the  fangs  and  depress  the  brow 
of  the  asp,  and  which  distinguish  the  character  of  ita 
head  from  that  of  the  face  of  a  young  girl.  But  it 
is  the  function  of  the  rightly-trained  imagination  to 
recognise,  in  these,  and  such  other  relative  aspects,  the 
unity  of  teaching  which  impresses,  alike  on  oui-  senses 
and  our  conscience,  the  eternal  difference  between  good 
and  evil :  and  the  rule,  over  the  clouds  of  lieaven  and 
over  the  creatures  in  the  earth,  of  the  same  Spirit  which 
teaches  to  our  own  hearts  the  bitterness  of  death,  and 
strength  of  love. 

43.  Now,  therefore,  a])]^roaching  our  subject  in  this 
balanced  temper,  which  will  neither  resolve  to  see  only 
what  it  would  desire,  nor  expect  to  see  only  what  it 
can  explain,  we  shall  find  our  enquiry  into  the  relation 
of  Art  to  Religion  is  distinctly  threefold :  first,  we  have 
to  ask  how  far  art  may  have  been  literally  directed  by 
K[)iiitual  powers;  secondly,  how  far,  if  not  inspired,  it 


40  THE    RELATION    OF 

iiiav  have  hocr.  exalted  by  them  ;  lastly,  how  far,  in  anj 
of  its  agencies,  it  has  advanced  the  cause  of  the  creeds  it 
lias  been  used  to  recommend. 

44.  First:  What  ground  have  we  for  thinking  that 
art  has  e^er  been  inspired  as  a  message  or  revelation? 
What  internal  evidence  is  there  in  the  work  of  great 
artists  of  their  having  been  under  the  authoritative 
•guidance  of  supernatural  powers  'i 

It  is  true  that  the  answer  to  so  mysterious  a  question 
cannot  rest  alone  upon  internal  evidence  ;  but  it  is  well 
that  you  should  know  what  might,  from  that  evidence 
alone,  be  concluded.  And  the  m<jre  impartially  you 
examine  tlie  phenomena  of  imagination,  the  more  firmly 
)-ou  will  be  led  to  conclude  that  they  are  the  result 
of  the  influence  of  the  common  and  N'ital,  but  not,  there- 
fore, less  Divine,  spirit,  of  which  some  portion  is  given 
to  all  li\ing  creatures  in  such  manner  as  may  be 
adapted  to  their  rank  in  creation  ;  and  that  everything 
which  men  rightly  accomplish  is  indeed  done  by  Divine 
help,  but  under  a  consistent  law  which  is  never  departed 
from. 

The  strength  of  this  spiritual  life  within  us  may  be 
increased  or  lessened  by  our  own  conduct ;  it  varies  from 
time  to  time,  as  physical  strength  varies ;  it  is  sum- 
moned on  differerii,  occasions  by  our  will,  and  dejected 
by  our  distress,  or  our  sin;  but  it  is  always  equally 
human,  and  equally  Divine.  We  are  men,  and  not 
mere  animals,  because  a  special  form  of  it   is   with  uj 


ART   TO    RIOLIGION.  47 

always ;  we  are  nobler  and  baser  men,  as  *it  is  with  m. 
more  or  less ;  but  it  is  never  given  to  ns  in  any  degree. 
wiiicii  can  make  ns  more  than  men. 

45.  Observe :  —  I  give  you  this  general  statement 
.lonbtfully,  and  only  as  that  towards  which  an  impai 
iial  reasoner  will,  I  think,  be  inclined  by  existing  data. 
But  I  shall  be  able  to  show  you,  without  any  doubt,  in* 
the  course  of  our  studies,  that  the  achievements  of  ai't 
which  have  been  usually  looked  upon  as  the  results  oi 
peculiar  inspiration,  have  Ijecn  arrived  at  only  through 
long  courses  of  wisely-directed  labour,  and  under  the 
inliuence  of  feelings  which  are  common  to  all  hn- 
tnanity. 

But  of  these  feelings  and  powers  which  m  diifcient 
degrees  are  connnon  to  Jiumanity,  you  are  to  note  tliat 
there  are  three  principal  divisions:  tirst,  the  instincts  of 
construction  or  melody,  which  we  share  with  lowci 
animals,  and  which  are  in  us  as  native  as  tne  instinct 
of  the  bee  or  nightingale ;  secondly,  the  faculty  of 
vision,  or  of  dreaming,  whether  in  sleep  or  in  conscioiiH 
trance,  or  by  \-oluntarily  exerted  fancy;  and  lastiy,  tiic 
power  of  rational  inference  and  collection,  of  lioth  tiiC 
laws  and   forms  of  beauty. 

46.  Now  the  faculty  of  vision,  being  closely  as^io- 
ciated  with  tlie  innermost  spiritual  nature,  is  the  one 
which  has  by  most  reasoners  been  held  for  the  |>ecu]iar 
channel  of  Divine  teaching :  and  it  is  a  fact  that  great 
pa^f;  of  pure  y  didactic  art  has  been  the  record,  whethe/ 


18  THE   RELATION    OF 

in  language,  or  by  linear  representation,  of  actual  -visioi. 
involuntarily  received  at  the  moment,  tliongli  cast  C3i 
a  mental  retina,  blanched  by  the  past  conrse  of  faithful 
life.  But  it  is  also  true  that  t^iese  visions,  where  most 
distinctly  received,  are  always — I  speak  deliberately — 
always,  the  sign  of  some  mental  limitation  or  derange- 
ment ;  and  that  the  persons  who  most  clearly  recognise 
their  value,  exaggeratedly  estimate  it,  choosing  what 
they  find  to  be  useful,  and  calling  that  '  inspired,'  and 
disregarding  what  they  perceiA'e  to  be  useless,  though 
presented  to  the  visionary  by  an  equal  authority. 

47.  Thus  it  is  probable  that  no  work  of  art  has 
been  more  widely  didactic  than  Albert  Diirer's  engrav- 
iuo-,  known  as  the  '  Knight  and  Dcl  .h.* '  Put  that 
is-  only  one  of  a  series  of  works  representing  similarly 
\ivid  dreams,  of  which  some  are  uninteresting,  except 
for  the  manner  of  their  representation,  as  the  '  St.  Hu- 
bert,' and  others  are  unintelligible ;  some,  frightful,  and 
wholly  r.nprcfitable ;  so  that  we  find  the  visionary 
faculty  in  that  great  painter,  when  accurately  examined, 
to  be  a  morbid  influence,  abasing  his  skill  more  fre- 
quently than  encouraging  it,  and  sacrificing  the  greater 
part  of  his  energies  upon  vain  subjects,  two  only  being 
produced,  in  the  course  of  a  long  life,  which  are  of  high 
didactic  value,  and  both  of  these  capable  only  of  giving 
Bad   courage. t     Whatever    the   value   of    these    two,   it 

*  standard  Series,  No.  9. 

I  The  meaning  of  the  '  Knight  find  Death,'  e^en  in  this  respect,  has 


ABT   TO    RELIGION.  49 

bears  more  the  aspect  of  a  treasure  obtained  at  great 
cost  of  suffering,  tlian  of  a  directly  granted  gift  from 
lieaven. 

48.  On  the  coutrarv,  not  only  the  highest,  but  the 
most  consistent  results  have  been  attained  in  art  by 
men  in  whom  the  faculty  of  vision,  however  strong,  was 
8ul)ordinate  to  that  of  deliberative  design,  and  tran- 
quillised  .by  a  measured,  continual,  not  feverish,  but 
affectionate,  observance  of  the  quite  unvisionary  facts  of 
the  surrounding  world. 

And  so  far  as  we  can  trace  the  connection  of  their 
powers  with  the  moral  character  of  their  lives,  we  shall 
find  that  the  best  art  is  the  woi'k  of  good,  but  of  not 
distinctively  religious  men,  who,  at  least,  are  conscious 
of  no  inspiration,  and  often  so  unconscious  of  their  supe- 
riority to  others,  that  one  of  the  Aery  greatest  of  them, 
deceived  by  his  modesty,  has  asserted  that  '  all  things 
are  possible  to  well-directed  labour.' 

49.  The  second  (juestion,  namely,  how  far  art,  if  not 
inspired,  has  yet  been  cuuol)led  by  religion,  I  shall  not 
touch  upon  to-day;  for  it  botli  requires  technical  criti- 
cism, and  would  divert  you  too  long  from  the  main 
question  of  all, — How  far  religion  has  been  helped  by 
art? 

You  will  find  that  the  operation  of  formative  art — (I 
will  not  speak  to-day  of  music) — tlie  operation  of  forma- 

lately  been  quoBtioned  on  good  grounds.  See  note  on  the  plate  bi 
Catalogue. 

3 


BC  THE   KELATION   OF 

tive  art  on  religions  ci-eed  is  essentially  tvvolold;  the 
realisation,  to  the  eyes,  of  imagined  spiritual  pers<»ns ; 
and  the  limitation  of  their  imagined  presence  to  certain 
places.  We  will  examine  these  two  functions  of  it  suc- 
cessively. 

50.  And'  first,  consider  accurately  what  the  agency 
of  art  is,  in  realising,  to  the  sight,  our  conceptions  of 
spiritual  persons. 

For  instance.  Assume  that  we  believe  that  the  Ma- 
donna is  always  present  to  hear  and  answer  our  prayers. 
Assume  also  that  this  is  true.  I  think  that  persons  in 
a  perfectly  honest,  faithful,  and  humble  temper,  would 
in  that  case  desire  only  to  feel  so  much  of  the  Divine 
presence  as  the  spiritual  Power  herself  chose  to  make 
felt ;  and,  above  all  things,  not  to  think  they  saw,  or 
knew,  anything  except  what  might  be  truly  perceived  or 
known. 

But  a  mind  imperfectly  faithful,  and  impatient  in  its 
distress,  or  cra\dng  in  its  dulness  for  a  more  distinct 
and  con\incing  sense  of  the  Divinity,  would  endeavour 
to  complete,  or  perhaps  we  should  rather  say  to  con- 
tract, its  conception,  into  the  definite  figure  of  a  woman 
wearing  a  blue  or  crimson  dress,  and  liaving  fair  fea- 
tures, dark  eyes,  and  gracefully  arranged  hair. 

Suppose,  after  forming  such  a  conception,  that  we 
have  the  power  to  realise  and  preserve  it,  this  image 
of  a  beautiful  figure  wdth  a  pleasant  expression  cannot 
but  have  the  tendency  of  afterwards  leading  us  to  ^hinl< 


ART    TO    KELIGION.  51 

•  'f  the  Yirgin  as  present,  Avlien  slie  is  not  actually  pre 
sent,  or  as  pleased  with  ns,  when  she  is  not  actuallj 
pleased ;  or  if  we  resolutely  prevent  ourselves  from  such 
;magination,  nevertheless  the  existence  of  the  image 
l)eside  us  will  often  turn  our  thoughts  towards  sub- 
jects of  religion,  when  otherwise  they  would  have  beer 
differently  occupied;  and,  in  the  midst  of  other  occu 
pations,  will  familiarise  more  or  less,  and  even  me- 
chanically associate  M-itli  common  or  faultful  states  of 
mind,  the  appearance  of  the  supposed  Divine  pereon. 

51.  There  are  thus  two  distinct  operations  upon  our 
mind :  tii"st,  the  aii  makes  us  believe  what  we  would 
not  otherwise  have  believed;  and  secondly,  it  makes  us 
think  of  subjects  we  should  not  otherwise  have  thought 
of,  intruding  them  amidst  our  ordinary  thoughts  in 
a  confused  and  familiar  manner.  We  cannot  with  any 
certainty  afhrni  the  advantage  or  the  harm  of  such 
accidental  pieties,  for  their  effect  wnll  be  very  different 
on  different  characters:  but,  without  any  question,  the 
art,  whicli  makes  us  believe  what  we  would  not  have 
otherwise  believed,  is  misapplied,  and  in  most  instances 
very  dangei'ously  so.  Our  duty  is  to  believe  in  the 
existence  of  Divine,  or  any  other,  pei*sons,  only  u[)on 
I'ational  prf)ofs  of  their  existence ;  and  not  because  wo 
have  seen  pictures  of  them.  And  since  the  real  re- 
lations between  us  and  liigher  spii-its  ai'c,  of  all  facts 
concerning  our  being,  those  which  it  is  most  important 
to  know  accurately,  if   we  know  at  all,  it  is  a  folly  so 


52  THE    RELATION    OF 

great  as  to  aiuount  to  real,  tlioiigh  most  unintentional 
sin,  to  allow  our  conceptions  of  those  relations  to  be 
modified  by  onr  own  nndisciplined  fancy. 

52.  But  now  observe,  it  is  hei-e  necessary  to  draw  a 
distinction,  so  subtle  that  in  dealing  with  facts  it  is 
continually  impossible  to  mark  it  with  precision,  yet  sn 
vital,  that  not  only  your  understanding  of  the  power 
of  art,  but  the  working  of  your  minds  in  matters  of 
primal  moment  to  you,  depends  on  the  effort  you  make 
to  affirm  this  distinction  strongly.  The  art  which  real- 
ises a  creature  of  the  imagination  is  only  miscliievous 
when  that  realisation  is  conceived  to  imply,  or  does 
practically  induce  a  belief  in,  the  real  existence  of  the 
imagined  personage,  contrary  to,  or  unjustified  by  the 
other  e\idence  of  its  existence.  But  if  the  art  only 
represents  the  personage  on  the  understanding  that  its 
form  is  imaginary,  then  the  effort  at  realisation  is 
healthful  and  beneficial. 

For  instance.  I  shall  place  in  your  Standard  series 
a  Greek  design  of  Apollo  crossing  the  sea  to  Delphi, 
which  is  an  example  of  one  of  the  highest  types  of 
Greek  or  any  other  art.  So  far  as  that  design  is  only 
an  expression,  under  the  symbol  of  a  human  form,  of 
what  may  be  rightly  imagined  respecting  the  solar 
power,  the  art  is  right  and  ennobling;  but  so  far  as 
it  conveyed  to  the  Greek  the  idea  of  there  being  a  real 
Apullc,  it  was  mischievous,  whether  there  be,  or  be  not, 
a  real   Apollo.     If  there  is  no  real  Apollo,  theu  the  art 


ART   TO    EKLIGION.  53 

was  miscLievous  because  it  decci\cd  ;  but  if  there  is  a 
real  Apollo,  then  it  was  still  iii;>rc  inischie\ous,  for  it  not 
only  began  the  degradation  of  the  image  of  that  tine 
god  into  a  decoration  for  niches,  and  a  device  for  seals; 
but  prevented  any  true  witness  being  borne  to  his  exist- 
ence. For  if  the  Greeks,  instead  of  mnltipl^nng  repre- 
sentations of  what  they  imagined  tct  be  the  fignre  of 
the  god,  had  given  us  accurate  dra^\^ngs  of  the  heroes 
and  battles  of  IMarathon  and  Ssilamis,  and  had  simply 
told  us  in  plain  (Ireek  what  exidence  they  had  of  the 
power  of  Apollo,  either  through  his  oracles,  his  help  or 
chastisement,  or  by  immediate  vision,  they  would  have 
ser\ed  their  religion  more  tridy  than  by  all  the  vase- 
paintings  and  fine  statues  that  ever  were  buried  or 
adored. 

53.  Now  in  this  particular  instance,  and  in  many 
other  examples  of  fine  Greek  art,  the  two  conditions 
of  thought,  sj'mbolic  and  realistic,  are  mingled ;  and 
tlic  ait  is  helpful,  as  I  w-ill  hereafter  show  yon,  in  one 
function,  and  in  the  othoi-  so  deadly,  that  T  think  no 
degradation  of  conception  of  Deity  has  ever  been  quite 
BO  base  as  that  implied  by  the  designs  of  Greek  vases 
in  the  period  of  decline,  say  about  250  b.c. 

l>ut  though  Jiniong  tlie  Greeks  it  is  thus  nearly 
always  difficult  to  say  what  is  symbolic  and  wluit  real- 
istic, in  the  range  of  Christian  art  the  distinction  is  clear. 
In  that,  a  yast  division  of  imaginative  work  is  occupied 
in   the   symbolism    of    virtues,  vices,   or   uatni-al.  powenj 


54  THE   KELATION    OE 

or  passions ;  and  in  the  representation  of  personages  who^ 
tliongh  nominally  real,  become  in  conception  symbolic 
In  the  greater  part  of  this  work  there  is  no  intention 
of  implying  the  existence  of  the  represented  creatnrc ; 
Dnrer's  Melencolia  and  Giotto's  Jnstice  are  accnrately 
characteristic  examples.  ISTow  all  such  art  is  wholly  good 
and  useful  when  it  is  the  work  of  good  men. 

54,  Again,  there  is  another  division  of  Chi-istian  work 
in  which  the  persons  represented,  though  nominally  real, 
are  treated  only  as  dramatis-person^e  of  a  poem,  and  sc- 
presented  confessedly  as  subjects  of  imagination.  All 
this  poetic  art  is  also  good  when  it  is  the  work  of  good 
men. 

55.  There  remains  only  therefore  to  be  considered,  aa 
truly  religious,  the  work  ^vhich  definitely  implies  ar.d 
n.odifies  the  conception  of  the  existence  of  a  real  peisc>n. 
There  is  hardly  any  great  art  ^vllich  entirely  belongs  to 
this  class ;  but  Raphael's  Madonna  della  Seggiola  is 
is  accurate  a  type  of  it  as  I  can  gi\e  you ;  Holbein's 
Madonna  at  Dresden,  the  Madonna  di  San  Sisto,  and 
the  Madonna  of  Titian's  Assumption,  all  belong  mainly 
to  this  class,  but  are  removed  somewhat  from  it  (as 
I  repeat,  nearly  all  great  art  is)  into  the  poetical  one. 
It  is  only  the  .bloody  crucifixes  and  gilded  virgins  and 
Dther  such  lower  forms  of  imagery  (by  which,  to  the 
honour  of  the  English  Church,  it  has  been  truly  claimed 
for  her,  that  '  she  has  never  appealed  to  the  madness  or 
diilness   of   her  people,')  which   belong  to   the   realistic 


ART   TO    KELIGTON.  55 

class  in  strict  limitation,  and  wliich  [)r<)perly  constitute 
tlie  type  of  it. 

There  is  indeed  an  inipoi-tant  scliool  of  sculpture  in 
Spain,  directed  to  tlie  same  objects,  but  not  demanding 
at  present  any  special  attention.  And  finally,  there  is 
the  vigorous  and  most  interesting  realistic  school  of  our 
own,  in  fhodern  times,  mainly  kno^m  to  the  public  by 
llolman  Hunt's  picture  of  the  Light  of  the  "World,  though, 
I  believe,  deri\dng  its  first  origin  fn^n  the  genius  of  the 
painter  to  whom  you  owe  also  the  revival  of  interest, 
first  here  in  Oxford,  and  then  universally,  in  the  cycle 
of  early  English  legend, — Dante  Kossetti. 

56.  The  effect  of  this  idealistic  art  on  the  religi<jus 
mind  of  Europe  varies  in  scope  more  than  any  other 
art  power;  f()r  in  its  higher  branches  it  touches  the 
most  sincere  religious  minds,  aifecting  an  earnest  class 
of  persons  who  cannot  be  reached  by  merely  poetical 
design ;  while,  in  its  lowest,  it  addresses  itself  not  onl}' 
to  the  most  vulgar  desires  for  religious  excitement,  but 
fo  the  mere  tln'rst  for  sensation  of  horror  wliich  charac- 
terises the  uneducated  orders  of  partially  civilised  coun- 
tries; nor  merely  to  the  thirst  for  horror,  but  to  the 
strange  love  of  death,  as  such,  wliich  has  sometimes 
in  Catholic  countries  showed  itself  peculiarly  by  the 
endeavour  to  paint  the  images  in  the  (•lia])els  of  the 
Sepulchre  so  as  to  look  (leccpti\ely  like  corpses.  The 
Bame  morbid  instinct  has  also  affected  the  minds  oi 
many  among  the  more  imaginative  and  powei  ful  artist.' 


56  THE   RELATION   OF 

with  a  feverish  gloom  which  distorts  their  finest  work; 
and  lastly — and  this  is  the  worst  of  all  its  effects— it  has 
occupied  the  sensibility  of  Christian  women,  universally 
in  lamenting  the  suffenngs  of  Christ,  instead  of  pre 
\'enting  those  of  His  people. 

57.  When  any  of  you  next  go  abl'oad,  observe,  and 
consider  the  meaning  of,  the  sculptures  and  paintings, 
which  of  every  rank  in  art,  and  in  every  chapel  and 
cathedral,  and  by  every  mountain  path,  recall  the  hours, 
and  represent  the  agonies,  of  the  Passion  of  Christ :  and 
try  to  form  some  estimate  of  the  efforts  that  have  been 
made  by  the  four  arts  of  eloquence,  music,  painting, 
and  sculpture,  since  the  twelfth  century,  to  wring  out 
of  the  hearts  of  women  the  last  drops  of  pity"  that  could 
be  excited  for  this  merely  physical  agony :  for  the  art 
nearly  always  dwells  on  the  phjsical  wounds  or  ex- 
haustion chiefly,  and  degrades,  far  more  than  it  animates, 
the  conception  of  pain. 

Then  try  to  conceive  the  quantity  of  time,  and  of 
excited  and  thrilling  emotion,  which  have  been  wasted 
by  the  tender  and  delicate  women  of  Christendom 
during  these  last  six  hundred  years,  in  thus  picturing 
to  themselves,  under  the  influence  of  such  imagery,  the 
Dodily  pain,  long  since  passed,  of  One  Person ; — which, 
so  far  as  they  indeed  conceived  it  to  be  sustained  by  a 
Divine  Nature,  could  not  for  that  reason  have  been  less 
endurable  than  the  agonies  of  any  simple  human  death 
by  torture :    and  then  tiy  to  estimate  what  might  have 


ART   TO    IJEIJGTON.  51 

l)een  tlie  better  result,  for  the  righteousness  and  felicity 
of  mankind,  if  these  same  women  liad  been  tanght  the 
Jeep  meaning  of  tlie  last  words  that  were  ever  spoken 
by  their  Master  to  those  who  had  minipterod  to  TTim  of 
their  snbstance:  'Danghters  of  Jenisalcm,  weep  not  foi 
ine,  but  weep  for  yourselves,  and  for  your  childi-en.'  II 
tliey  liad  but  been  tanght  to  measure  with  their  pitiful 
thoughts  the  tortures  of  battle-fields ;— the  slowly  con- 
suming plagues  of  death  in  the  starving  children,  and 
^vasted  age,  of  the  innumerable  desolate  those  battles 
left;  —  nay  in  oui  own  life  of  peace,  the  agony  of 
unnurtured,  untaught,  unhelped  creatures,  awaking  at 
the  grave's  edge  to  know  how  they  should  have  lived; 
and  the  worse  pain  of  those  whose  existence,  not  the 
ceasing  of  it,  is  death;  those  to  whom  the  cradle  was 
a  curse;,  and  for  whom  the  words  they  cannot  hear, 
'ashes  to  ashes,'  are  all  that  they  have  ever  recei^■ed 
of  l)enediction.  These, — you  who  Avould  fain  have  wept 
at  His  feet,  or  stood  by  His  cross, — these  you  have 
always  with  you,  Him  you  ha^e  not  always. 

58.  The  wretched  in  death  you  have  always  with  you. 
Vcs,  and  the  brave  and  good  in  life  you  have  always ; — 
these  also  needing  help,  though  you  supposed  they  had 
only  to  help  others ;  these  also  claiming  to  be  thought  for, 
and  remembered.  And  you  will  find,  if  you  look  into  his- 
tory  with  this  clue,  that  one  of  quite  the  chief  reasons 
foi     the    continual    misery   of    mankind    is    that    they 

are  always    divided   in  their  worship   between  angels  oi 
3* 


58  THE    RELATION    OF 

uaints,  "wlio  are  out  of  their  sight,  and  need  no  help, 
and  prond  and  evil-minded  men,  who  aie  too  definitely' 
in  their  sight,  and  onglit  not  to  have  their  hel} .  And 
consider  how  the  arts  have  thus  followed  the  worship  of 
the  crowd.  Yon  have  paintings  of  saints  and  angels, 
innnmerable ; — of  petty  conrtiers,  and  contemptible  or 
r'riiei  kfngs,  innnmerable.  Few,  how  few  yon  have  (bnt 
these,  observe,,  almost  always  by  great  painters)  of  the 
best  men,  or  of  their  actions.  But  think  for  yourselves, 
— I  have  no  time  now  to  enter  upon  the  mighty  field, 
nor  imagination  enough  to  guide  me  beyond  the  thres- 
hold of  it, — think,  what  history  might  have  been  to  us 
now ; — nay,  what  a  different  history  that  of  all  Europe 
might  have  become,  if  it  had  but  been  the  object  both 
of  the  people  to  discern,  and  of  their  arts  to  honour 
and  bear  record  of,  the  great  deeds  of  their  worthiest 
men.  And  if,  instead  of  living,  as  they  have  always 
hithei'to  done,  in  a  hellish  cloud  of  contention  and  re- 
venge, lighted  by  fantastic  dreams  of  cloudy  sanctities, 
they  had  sought  to  reward  and  punish  justly,  wherever 
reward  and  punislnnent  were  due,  but  chiefly  to  re- 
ward; and  at  least  rather  to  bear  testimony  to  the 
human  acts  which  deserved  God's  anger  or  His  blessing 
than  only  in  presumptuous  imagination  to  display  tlit 
secrets  of  Judgment,  or  the  beatitudes  of  Eternity. 

59.  Such  I  conceive  generally,  though  indeed  with 
good  arising  out  of  it,  for  every  great  evil  brings 
Bomc  ffood  in  its  backward  eddies — such  I  coiiceive  tc 


AKT   TO    RELIGION.  5J; 

have  been  the  deadly  function  of  art  in  its  ministry  tc 
what,  whether  in  licathen  or  Christian  lands,  and  whethei 
in  the  pageantry  of  words,  or  ci^lours,  or  fair  forms,  ii- 
truly,  and  in  the  deep  sense,  to  be  called  idolatry — the 
Bcr^ang  with  the  best  of  our  hearts  and  minds,  some 
dear  or  sad  fantasy  which  we  ha\"e  made  for  ourselves, 
while  we  disobey  the  present  call  of  the  Master,  who  ia 
not  dead,  and  who  is  not  now  fainting  under  His  cross, 
hut  requiring  us  to  take  up  ours. 

60.  I  pass  to  the  second  great  function  of  religious 
aii,  the  limitation  of  the  idea  of  Divine  presence  to 
particular  localities.  It  is  of  course  impossible  within 
my  present  limits  to  touch  upon  this  power  of  art,  as 
employed  on  the  temples  of  the  gods  of  various,  reli- 
gions ;  we  will  examine  that  on  future  occasions.  To- 
day, I  want  only  to  map  out  main  ideas,  and  I  can  do 
this  best  by  speaking  exclusiNcly  of  this  localising  influ- 
ence as  it  affects  our  own  faith. 

Observe  lii-st,  that  the  localisation  is  almost  entirely 
dependent  upon  human  art.  You  must  at  least  take  a 
stone  and  set  it  up  for  a  pillar,  if  you  are  to  mark  the 
place,  so  as  to  know  it  again,  where  a  vision  ap- 
peared. A  ])er6ecuted  people,  needing  to  conceal  their 
))laces  of  worship,  may  perform  every  religious  cere- 
iriony  first  under  one  crag  of  the  hill-side,  and  then 
imder  another,  without  invalidating  the  sacredness  of 
the  rites  or  sacraments  thus  administered  It  is, 
therefore,  M'e   all   acknowledge,  inessential,   that   a    par- 


60  THE   RELATION   OF 

ticular  spot  should  be  surrounded  witli  a  ring  of  stonoSj 
or  enclosed  within  walls  of  a  certain  style  of  architecture, 
and  so  set  apart  as  the  only  place  where  such  ceremonies 
may  be  properly  performed ;  and  it  is  thus  less  by  any 
direct  appeal  to  experience  or  to  reason,  but  in  con 
sequence  of  the  effect  upon  our  senses  pi'oduced  by  the 
architecture,  that  we  receive  the  first  strong  impressions 
of  what  we  afterwards  contend  for  as  absolute  truth. 
I  particularly  wish  you  to  notice  ho^v  it  is  always  by 
help  of  human  art  that  such  a  result  is  attained,  because, 
remember  always,  I  am  neither  disputing  nor  assei-tiug 
the  truth  of  any  theological  doctrine ; — that  is  not  my 
province ; — I  am  only  questioning  the  expediency  of  en- 
forcing that  doctrine  by  the  help  of  archite'cture.  Put 
a  rouffh  stone  for  an  altar  under  tlie  liawthorn  on  a 
village  green ; — separate  a  portion  of  tlie  green  itself 
with  an  ordinary  paling  from  the  rest;^ — then  consecrate, 
with  whatever  form  you  choose,  tlie  sj^ace  of  grass  yon 
have  enclosed,  and  meet  within  the  wooden  fence  as 
often  as  you  desire  to  pray  or  preach ;  yet  you  will  not 
easily  fasten  an  impression  in  the  miuds  of  the  villagers, 
that  God  inhabits  the  space  of  grass  inside  the  fence, 
and  does  not  extend  His  presence  to  the  common  beyond 
it:  and  that  the  daisies  and  violets  on  one  side  of  tho 
railing  are  holy, — on  the  other,  profane.  But,  instead 
of  a  wooden  fence,  build  a  wall ;  pave  the  interior  space  ; 
roof  it  over,  so  as  to  make  it  comparatively  dark ; — and 
you  may  pei'suade  the  villagers  with  ease  that  you  havw 


AKT   TO    KELIGION.  61 

()uiJl  a  house  which  Deity  inhabits,  or  that  }cu  have 
become,  in  the  old  French  phrase,  a  'logeur  du  Bon 
Dieu.' 

61.  And  farther,  though  I  have  no  dcsiie  to  intro 
duce  any  question  as  to  the  truth  of  what  we  thuf 
;irchitecturally  teach,  I  would  desire  you  most  strictly 
fo  determine  what  is  intended  to  be  taught. 

Do  not  think  I  underrate — I  am  among  the  last  men 
living  who  would  underrate — the  importance  of  the  sen- 
timents connected  with  their  church  to  the  population 
of  a  pastoral  village.  I  admit,  in  its  fullest  extent, 
tlie  moral  value  of  the  scene,  which  is  almost  always 
1  me  of  perfect  purity  and  peace ;  and  of  the  sense  of 
supernatm'al  love  and  protection,  which  fills  and  sui- 
rounds  the  low  aisles  and  homely  porch.  But  the 
question  I  desire  earnestly  to  leave  with  you  is,  whether 
nil  tlie  earth  ought  not  to  be  peaceful '  and  pure, 
and  the  acknowledgment  of  the  Divine  protection  as 
universal,  as  its  reality?  That  in  a  mysterious  way  the 
[presence  of  Deity  is  vouchsafed  where  it  is  sought,  and 
withdrawn  where  it  is  forgotten,  must  of  course  be 
:;ranted  as  the  first  postulate  in  the  enquiry :  but  the 
point  for  our  decision  is  just  this,  ^vhethcr  it  ouglit 
always  to  be  sought  in  one  place  only,  and  forgotten  in 
e\ery  other. 

It  may  be  replied,  that  since  it  is  impossible  to  con- 
secrate tlie  entire  space  of  the  earth,  it  is  better  thus 
to  secure  a  p(^rtion  of  it  tlian  none:  but  surely,  if  so, 


62  THE   EELATIOK    OF 

we  oQglit  to  make  some  effort  to  enlarge  the  favoured 
groimd,  and  even  look  forward  to  a  time  when  in 
English  ^•illages  there  may  be  a  God's  acre  tenanted 
by  the  living,  not  the  dead  ;  and  when  we  shall  rathei 
l<^ok  with  aversion  and  fear  to  the  remnant  of  ground 
that  is  set  apart  as  profane,  than  with  reverence  to  a 
narrow  portion  of  it  enclosed  as  holy. 

02,  But  now,  farther.  Suppose  it  be  admitted  that 
by  enclosing  ground  with  walls,  and  performing  certain 
ceremonies  there  habitually,  some  kind  of  sanctity  is 
indeed  secured  within  that  space, — still  the  question 
]-emains  open  whether  it  be  advisable  for  religious  pur- 
poses to  decorate  the  enclosure.  For  separation  the 
mere  Myalls  would  be  enough.  What  is  the  purpose  of 
your  decoration  ? 

Let  us  take  an  instance — the  most  noble  with  which 
I  am  acquainted,  the  Cathedral  of  Chartres.  Ton  have 
there  the  most  splendid  coloured  glass,  and  the  richest 
sculpture,  and  the  grandest  proportions  of  building, 
united  to  produce  a  sensation  of  pleasure  and  awe.  We 
profess  that  this  is  to  honour  the  Deity  ;  or,  in  other 
words,  that  it  is  pleasing  to  Him  that  we  should  delight 
om*  eyes  with  blue  and  golden  colours,  and  solemnise 
our  spirits  by  the  sight  of  large  stones  laid  one  on 
another,  and  ingeniously  carved. 

63.  I  do  not  think  it  can  be  doubted  that  it  is 
pleasing  to  Him  when  we  do  this  ;  for  He  has  Himself 
Di-epared  for  us,  nearly  every  morning  and  evening,  win 


AET   TO    RELIGION.  63 

dows  painted  with  Divine  art,  in  blue  and  geld  and 
vermilion;  windows  lighted  from  within  by  the  1  astro 
of  that  heaven  which  we  may  assnme,  at  least  with 
more  certainty  than  any  consecrated  gronud,  to  be  one 
of  Ilis  dAvelling-places.  Again,  in  every  mountain  side, 
and  cliff  of  rude  sea  shore,  lie  has  heaped  stones  one 
upon  another  of  greater  magnitude  than  those  of 
Chartres  Cathedral,  and  sculptured  them  with  floral 
ornament, — surely  not  less  sacred  because  living? 

64.  Must  it  not  then  be  only  because  we  love  our 
own  work  better  than  His,  that  we  respect  the  lucent 
glass,  but  not  the  lucent  clouds ;  that  we  weave  em- 
broidered robes  with  ingenious  Angers,  and  make  bright 
the  gilded  vaults  we  have  beautifully  ordained — while 
yet  we  have  not  considered  the  heavens  the  work  of 
nis  fingers ;  nor  the  stars  of  the  strange  vault  \A'hich 
lie  has  ordained.  And  do  we  dream  that  by  carving  fonts 
and  lifting  pillars  iji  His  honour,  who  cuts  the  way  of 
the  rivers  among  the  rocks,  and  at  v/hose  repr(jof  the 
pillars  of  the  earth  are  astonished,  we  shall  obtain  pardon 
for  the  dishonour  done  to  the  hills  and  streams  by  which 
lie  has  appointed  our  dwelling-place ; — for  the  infection 
of  their  sweet  air  with  poison  ; — for  the  burning  up  of 
their  tender  grass  and  flowers  with  lire,  and  for  spread- 
ing such  a  <5hame  of  mixed  luxur}  and  misery  over  our 
native  land,  as  if  we  laboured  only  that,  at  least  here  in 
England,  we  might  be  able  to  give  the  lie  to  the  song, 
tA-hether  of    the  ('beruliim  above,   or  Cliurc.h  beneath — 


64  THK    KKLATION    OF 

'  II ol}-  holy,  Lord  God  of  all  creatures  :  Heaven — arui 
Fari/i—Sire  full  of  Thy  glory?' 

65.  And  how  much  more  there  is  that  I  long  to  saj 
to  you;  and  how  much,  I  hope,  that  you  would  lik« 
to  answer  to  mo,  or  jto  question  me  of !  But  I  can  say 
no  more  to-day.  We  are  not,  I  trust,  at  the  end  of 
our  talks  or  thoughts  together ;  but,  if  it  were  so,  aiul 
I  never  spoke  to  you  more,  this  that  I  have  said  tc 
}ou  I  should  have  been  glad  to  have  been  permitted 
to  say ;  and  this,  farther,  which  is  the  sum  of  it, — That 
we  7)ia(/  have  splendour  of  art  again,  and  with  that,  we 
may  truly  praise  and  honour  our  Maker,  and  with  that 
set  forth  the  beauty  and  holiness  of  all  that  He  has 
made:  but  only  after  we  have  striven  with  our  whole 
liearts  first  to  sanctify  the  temple  of  the  body  and 
spirit  of  every  child  that  has  no  roof  to  cover  its  head 
from  the  cold,  and  no  walls  to  guard  its  soul  from  cor- 
ruption, in  this  our  English  land. 

One  word  more.  ■• 

Wliat  I  have  suggested  hitherto,  respecting  the  reia 
tions  of  All  to  Religion,  you  must  receive  throughout 
as  merely  motive  of  thought ;  though  jou  must  have 
well  seen  that  my  own  convictions  were  established 
finally  on  some  of  the  points  in  question.  But  I  must, 
iii  conclusion,  tell  joii  something  that  I  know ; — whicKj 
U  you  truly  labour,  you  will  one  day  know  also;  and 
which  I  trust  some  of  you  will  believe,  now. 

During  the  minutes  in  which  you  have  been  listening 


AET    TO    RELIGION.  6ft 

to  ine,  I  suppose  that  almost  at  every  other  sentence 
those  whose  habit  of  mind  has  been  one  of  veneration 
for  established  forms  and  faiths,  must  have  been  in 
dread  that  I  was  about  to  say,  or  in  pang  of  regret  at 
my  having  said,  what  seemed  to  them  an  irreverent  oi 
reckless  word  touching  vitally  important  things. 

So  far  from  this  being  the  fact,  it  is  just  because  the 
feelings  that  I  most  desire  to  cultivate  in  your  minds 
are  those  of  reverence  and  admiration,  that  I  am  so 
earnest  to  prevent  you  from  being  moved  to  either  by 
trivial  or  false  semblances.  This  is  the  thing  which 
I  KNOW — and  which,  if  you  labour  faithfully,  you  shall 
know  also. — that  in  Reverence  is  the  chief  joy  and  power 
of  life ; —  iVverence,  for  what  is  pure  and  bright  in  j^our 
o\vn  youth ;  for  what  is  true  and  tried  in  the  age  of 
others ;  for  all  that  is  gracious  among  the  living,  great 
among  the  dead, — and  marvellous  in  the  Powers  that 
cannot  die. 


^^tut:^  3* 


TEE  RELATION   OF  ART   TO    MOHALi: 


^tdnxt  3. 


TME  RELATION  OF  ART   TO  MORALti. 

66  i'ou  probably  recollect  that,  in  the  beginning 
I  [  nij  last  lecture,  it  was  stated  tliat  fine  art  had,  and 
fx»ald  have,  but  three  functions :  the  enforcing  of  the 
rt>ligions  sentiments  of  men,  the  pci-focting  their  ethi(;al 
Btate,  and  the  doing  them  material  serdce.  We  ha\'e 
to-day  to  examine  the  mode  of  its  a(;ti()n  in  the  second 
})ower,  that  of  perfecting  the  morality  or  ethical  state 
of  men. 

Perfecting,  observ-e — not  producing. 

You  must  have  the  right  moral  state  first,  or  yon 
cannot  have  the  art.  But  when  the  art  is  once  obtained. 
its  reflected  action  enhances  and  completes  the  moi-al 
state  out  of  which  it  arose,  and,  above  all,  communicates 
tlie  exaltation  to  other  minds  whicli  are  already  morally 
capable  of  the  like. 

G7.  For  instance,  take  the  art  of  singing,  and  the 
Bimplest  perfect  master  of  it,  (up  to  the  limits  of  his 
nature)  whom  you  can  find — a  skylark.  From  him  you 
uuiv  learn  wliut  it  is  to  'siii^-   for    joy.'     You  must  get 


70  THE   KELATION    OF 

the  moral  state  first,  the  pure  gladness,  then  give  it 
finished  expression ;  and  it  is  perfected  in  itself,  and 
made  communicable  to  other  creatures  capable  of  such 
joy.  But  it  is  incomniunicable  to  those  who  ai'e  not 
prepared  to  recei^'e  it. 

N"ow,  all  right  human  song  is,  similarly,  the  finished 
expression,  by  art,  of  the  joy  or  grief  of  noble  persons, 
for  right  causes.  And  accurately  in  proportion  to  the 
rightness  of  the  cause,  and  purity  of  the  emotion,  is 
the  possibility  of  the  fine  ai't.  A  maiden  may  sing  of 
her  lost  love,  but  a  miser  cannot  sing  of  his  lost  money. 
And  with  absolute  precisic^i  from  highest  to  lowest, 
the  fineness  of  the  possible  art  is  an  index  of  the  moral 
purity  and  majesty  of  the  emotion  it  expresses.  You 
may  test  it  practically  at  any  instant.  Question  with 
yourselves  respecting  any  feeUng  that  has  taken  strong 
possession  of  your  mind,  '  Could  this  be  sung  by  a 
master,  and  sung  nobly,  with  a  ti'ue  melody  and  art  ? ' 
Then  it  is  a  right  feeling.  Could  it  not  be  sung  at  all, 
or  only  sung  ludicrously  ?  It  is  a  base  one.  And  that 
is  so  in  all  the  arts ;  so  that  with  mathematical  pi'ecision, 
subject  to  no  error  or  exception,  the  art  of  a  nation. 
80  far  as  it  exists,  is  an  exponent  of  its  ethical  state. 

Q8.  An  exponent,  observe,  and  exalting'  influence; 
but  not  the  root  or  cause.  You  caimot  paint  or  sing 
yom-selves  into  being  good  men;  you  must  be  good 
men  l»efore  you  can  either  paint  or  sing,  and  then  the 
coloui    and  sfmnd  will  complete  in  you  all  tliat  is  best 


ART   TO    MORALS.  71 

And  this  it  was  that  I  called  upon  yon  to  hear,  say- 
mg,  '  listen  to  me  at  least  now,'  in  the  first  lecture^ 
namely,  that  no  art-teaching  could  he  of  use  to  you 
but  would  rather  he  harmful,  unless  it  was  grafted  on 
something  deeper  than  all  art.  For  indeed  not  only 
with  this,  of  which  it  is  my  function  to  show  you  the 
laws,  but  much  more  with  the  art  of  all  men,  which 
you  came  here  cliiefiy  to  learn,  that  of  language,  the 
chief  vices  of  education  haxe  arisen  from  the  one  great 
fallacy  of  supposing  that  noble  language  is  a  communi- 
cable trick  of  grammar  and  accent,  instead  of  simply  the 
careful  expression  of  right  thought.  All  the  ^"irtues  of 
language  are,  in  tlieir  roots,  moral ;  it  becomes  accurate 
if  the  speaker  desires  to  l)p  true ;  clcai-,  if  he  speaks  \vith 
sympathy  and  a  desire  to  be  i)itcllig-i])le ;  powerful,  n 
he  has  earnestness  ;  pleasant,  if  he  has  sense  of  rhythm 
and  order.  Tliere  are  no  other  \drtues  of  language  pro- 
ducible by  art  than  these:  but  let  me  mark  more  deeply 
for  an  instant  the  significance  of  one  of  them.  Lan- 
guage, I  said,  is  only  clear  when  it  is  sympathetic. 
You  can,  in  truth,  miderstand  a  man's  word  only  by 
undei-standing  his  temper.  Your  own  word  is  also  aa 
of  an  unknc>wn  tongue  to  him  unless  he  understands 
yours.  And  it  is  this  which  makes  the  art  of  lan- 
guage, if  any  one  is  to  be  chosen  separately  from  the 
rest,  that  wliich  is  fittest  for  the  instrument  of  a  gentle- 
man's education.  To  teach  the  meaning  of  a  woi-d 
thorougldy   is   to    teach   the    nature    (f    the    spirit    that 


72  THE   RELATION    OF 

coined  it;  the  secret  of  language  is  the  secret  of 
sympathy,  and  its  full  charm  is  possible  only  to  the 
gentle.  And  thus  the  principles  of  beautiful  speech 
have  all  been  lixed  by  sincere  and  kindly  speech.  On 
the  laws  which  ha\e  been  determined  by  sincerity,  false 
speech,  appaiently  beautiful,  may  afterwards  be  con- 
structed ;  but  all  such  utterance,  whether  in  oration  or 
poetry,  is  not  only  without  permanent  power,  but  it  is 
destructive  of  the  principles  it  has  usurped.  So  long 
as  no  words  are  uttered  but  in  faithfulness,  so  long 
the  art  of  languag'e  goes  on  exalthig  itself ;  but  the 
moment  it  is  shaped  and  chiselled  on  external  principles, 
it  falls  into  frivolity,  and  perislies.  And  this  truth  would 
have  been  long  ago  manifest,  had  it  not  been  that  in 
peri«^ds  of  advanced  academical  science  there  is  always 
a  tendency  to  deny  the  sincerity  of  the  first  masters 
of  language.  Once  learn  to  w^ite  gracefully  in  the 
manner  of  an  ancient  author,  and  we  are  apt  to  think 
that  he  also  wrote  in  the  manner  of  some  one  else. 
But  no  noble  nor  right  style  was  ever  yet  founded  but 
out  of  a  sincere  heart. 

No  man  is  worth  reading  to  form  your  style,  who 
does  not  mean  what  he  says ;  nor  w^as  any  great  style 
ever  invented  but  by  some  man  who  meant  what  he 
said.  Find  out  the  beginner  of  a  great  manner  of 
writing,  and  you  have  also  found  the  declarer  of  some 
true  facts  or  sincere  passir)ns ;  and  ycnir  whole  method 
of  reading  will  thus  be  quickened,  foi,  being  sure  thai 


AKT   TO    MOKALS.  7fl 

j'our    author   really   meant   what    he   said,   you   will   bo 
-much  more  careful  to  ascertain  what  it  is  that  he  means. 

69.  And  of  yet  greater  importance  is  it  deeply  to 
know  that  every  beauty  possessed  by  the  language  (.f 
a  nation  is  significant  of  the  innermost  laws  of  its  being. 
Keep  the  temper  of  the  peojjle  stern  and  manly ;  make 
their  associations  grave,  courteous,  and  for  worthy  ob- 
jects ;  occupy  them  in  just  deeds ;  and  their  tongue  nnist 
needs  be  a  grand  one.  Kor  is  it  possible,  therefore— 
observe  the  necessary  reflected  action — that  an}"  tongue 
should  be  a  noble  one,  of  which  the  words  are  not  so 
many  trumpet-calls  to  action.  All  great  languages  in- 
variably utter  great  things,  and  command  them ;  they 
cannot  be  mimicked  but  by  obedience ;  the  breath  of 
them  is  inspiration  because  it  is  not  only  vocal,  but 
vital ;  and  you  can  only  learn  to  speak  as  these  men 
spoke,  by  becoming  what  these  men  were. 

70.  Now  for  direct  confirmation  of  this,  I  want  you 
to  think  over  the  relation  of  expression  to  character  in 
two  great  mastere  of  the  absolute  art  of  language,  Yirgil 
and  Pope.  You  are  perhaps  surprised  at  the  last  name ; 
and  indeed  you  ha\e  in  English  nnich  higher  grasp  and 
meh)dy  of  language  from  more  passionate  minds,  but  you 
have  nothing  else,  in  its  range,  so  perfect.  I  name, 
therefore,  these  two  men,  because  they  are  the  two  most 
accomplished  Artists^  merely  as  such,  whom  I  know  in 
literature ;  and  because  I  think  you  will  be  afterwards 
interested  in  investigating  how  the  infinite  grace  in  the 


74  THE    KKLATIOJN    OF 

words  of  the  one,  the  severity  in  those  of  the  other 
and  the  precision  in  those  of  both,  arise  wholly  out  oi 
the  moral  elements  of  their  minds: — out  of  the  deep 
tenderness  in  Yirgil  which  enabled  him  to  write  the  stories 
of  Nisus  and  Lausus ;  and  the  serene  and  just  benevo- 
lence which  placed  Pope,  in  his  theology,  two  centuries  in 
advance  of  Iris  time,  and  enabled  him  to  sum  the  law  of 
noble  hfe  in  two  lines  which,  so  far  as  I  know,  are  the 
most  complete,  the  most  concise,  and  the  most  lofty  ex- 
pression of  moral  temper  existing  in  EngHsh  words : — 
''Never  elated^  while  one  man^s  ojpjpresid; 
Never  dejected^  while  another's  hlesid? 
I  wish  you  also  to  remember  these  lines*  of  Pope,  and 
to  make  yourselves  entirely  masters  of  liis  system  of 
ethics;  because,  putting  Shakespeare  aside  as  rather  the 
world's  than  ours,  I  hold  Pope  to  be  the  most  perfect 
representative  we  have,  since  Chaucer,  of  the  true 
English  mind;  and  I  think  the  Dunciad  is  the  most 
absolutely  chiselled  and  monumental  work  'exacted'  in 
our  country.  You  will  find,  as  you  study  Pope,  that 
he  has  expressed  for  you,  in  the  strictest  language  and 
within  the  briefest  limits,  every  law  of  art,  of  criticism, 
of  ec(»nomy,  of  poUcy,  and,  finally,  of  a  benevolence, 
Inimble,  rational,  and  resigned,  contented  with  its  allot- 
ted share  of  life,  and  trusting  the  problem  of  its  sal 
\ation  to  Him  in  whose  hand  lies  that  of  the  universe. 

71.     And  now  I  pass   to  the  arts  with  which  I  have 
special  concern,  in  which,  though   the  facts  are  exactly 


ART   TO    MOKALS.  79 

the  same,  I  slia.l  ha\'e  more  difficulty  in  pro^ang  my 
assertion,  because  very  few  of  us  are  as  cognizant  of 
tiie  merit  of  painting  as  we  are  of  that  df  language ; 
and  I  can  only  show  you  whence  that  merit  springs 
from,  after  having  thoroughly  sho^^m  you  in  what  il 
consists.  But,  in  the  meantime,  I  have  simply  to  tel! 
3"ou,  that  the  manual  ai-ts  are  as  accurate  exponents  of 
ethical  state,  as  otlier  modes  of  expression ;  first,  with 
absolute  precision,  of  that  of  the  workman,  and  then 
svith  precision,  disguised  by  many  distorting  influences, 
of  that  <»f  the  nation  to  wliich  he  belongs. 

And,  first,  they  are  a  perfect  exponent  of  the  mind  of 
the  workman ;  but,  being  so,  i-emember,  if  the  mind  be 
great  or  complex,  the  art  is  not  an  easy  book  to  read; 
for  we  nnist  ourselves  possess  all  the  mental  characters 
of  which  we  are  to  i-cad  the  signs.  Ncj  man  can  read 
the  evidence  of  labour  who  is  not  himself  laborious,  foi 
he  does  not  know  what  the  work  cost :  nor  can  he 
read  the  evidence  of  true  passion  if  he  is  not  passionate ; 
nor  of  gentleness  if  he  is  not  o-ciitle :  and  the  most 
subtle  signs  of  fault  and  wealsiiess  of  character  he  can 
only  judge  by  having  had  the  same  faults  to  fight  with. 
T  myself,  for  instance,  know  impatient  work,  and  tii'cd 
work,  better  than  most  critics,  because  I  am  myself 
always  im])atient,  and  often  tired: — so  also,  the  patient 
and  indefatigable  toucli  of  a  mighty  master  becomea 
more  wonderful  to  me  than  to  others.  Yet,  wonderful 
in  no  mean   measure  it  will  be  to  you  all,  when  I  make 


76  THE   RELATION   OF 

it  laanifest ; — and  as  soon  as  we  begin  onr  i-eal  w<^rlc 
and  yon  haA^e  learned  what  it  is  to  draw  a  ti-ne  lino,  1 
Bhall  be  able  to  make  manifest  to  yon, — and  indispnt- 
ably  so,~that  the  day's  work  of  a  man  like  Mantegnn 
or  Paul  Veronese  consists  of  an  unfaltering,  uninter 
rupted  succession  of  movements  of  the  hand  more  precise 
than  those  of  the  finest  fencer:  the  pencil  leaving  one 
point  and  arriving  at  another,  not  only  with  unerring 
precision  at  the  extremity  of  the  line,  but  with  an  un 
erring  and  yet  varied  course — sometimes  over  spaces  a 
foot  or  more  in  extent — yet  a  course  so  determined  e\ery- 
where  that  either  of  these  men  could,  and  Veronese  olten 
does,  draw  a  finished  profile,  or  any  other  portion  of  the 
contour  of  a  face,  with  one  line,  not  afterwards  changed. 
Try,  first,  to  realise  to  yourselves  the  muscular  precision 
of  that  action,  and  the  intellectual  strain  of  it;  for  the 
movement  of  a  fencer  is  perfect  in  practised  monotony ; 
but  the  movement  of  the  hand  of  a  great  painter  is  at 
every  instant  governed  by  direct  and  new  intention. 
Then  imagine  that  muscular  firmness  and  subtlety,  and 
the  instantaneously  selective  and  ordinant  energy  of  the 
brain,  sustained  all  day  long,  not  only  without  fatigue, 
but  with  a  visible  joy  in  the  exertion,  like  that  which 
an  eagle  seems  to  take  in  the  wave  of  his  wings ;  and 
this  all  life  long,  and  through  long  life,  not  only  with- 
out failure  of  power,  but  with  visible  increase  of  it,  until 
the  actually  organic  changes  of  old  age.  And  then  con- 
eidci-,  so  far  as  }'ou  know  anything  of  physiology,  what 


ART   TO   MORALS.  77 

Bort  of  an  ethical  state  of  body  and  mind  that  means ! 
— ethic  through  ages  past  !  what  fineness  of  race  there 
must  be  to  get  it,  wliat  e.xqnisite  l)alance  and  sjmmetrv 
of  the  vital  powers!  And  then,  finally,  determine  foi 
yourselves  whether  a  manhood  li]<e  that  is  consistent 
with  any  vicionsness  of  sonl,  with  any  mean  anxiety, 
any  gnawing  Inst,  any  wretchedness  of  spite  or  remorse, 
any  consciousness  of  rebellion  against  law  of  God  or 
man,  or  any  actual,  though  unconscious,  violation  of  even 
the  least  law  to  which  obedience  is  essential  for  the  glory 
of  life,  and  the  pleasing  of  its  Giver. 

72.  It  is,  of  course,  true  that  many  of  the  strong 
masters  had  deep  faults  of  character,  but  their  fanltt 
always  show  in  their  work.  It  is  true  that  some  could 
not  govern  their  passions;  if  so,  the}'  died  young,  or 
they  painted  ill  when  old.  But  the  greater  part  of  our 
misapprehension  in  the  whole  matter  is  fi-om  our  not 
I  laving  w^ell  known  who  the  great  painters  were,  and 
taking  delight  in  the  petty  skill  that  was  bred  in  the 
fumes  of  the  taverns  of  the  ISTorth,  instead  of  theii-s  who 
breathed  empyreal  air,  sons  of  the  niorning,  under  the 
woods  of  Assisi  and  the  crags  of  Cadore. 

73.  It  is  true  however  also,  as  I  have  pointed  out 
long  ago,  that  the  strong  nuisters  fall  into  two  gi-eat 
divisions,  one  leading  simple  and  natural  lives,  the  other 
resti-ained  in  a  Puritanism  of  the  worship  of  beauty ; 
iind  these  Uvo  manners  of  life"  you  may  recognise  in  a 
iiioiiient  by  their  work.     Ciciici';illy  the  naturalists  are  tlif 


78  THE   KELATION   OF 

Strongest ;  but  there  are  two  of  the  Puritans,  whose  work 
if  I  can  succeed  in  making  clearly  understandable  to  you 
during  my  three  years  here,  it  is  all  I  need  care  to  do. 
But  of  these  two  Puritans  one  I  cannot  name  to  you,  and 
the  other  I  at  present  will  not.  One  I  cannot,  for  no 
one  knows  his  name,  except  the  baptismal  one,  Bernard, 
or  'dear  little  Bernard' — Bernardino,  called,  from  his 
birthplace,  (Luino,  on  the  lago  Maggiore,)  Bernard  of 
Luino.  The  other  is  a  Venetian,  of  whom  many  of  you 
probably  have  never  heard,  and  of  whom,  through  me, 
you  shall  not  hear  until  I  have  tried  to  get  some  picture 
by  him  over  to  England. 

74.  Observe  then,  this  Puritanism  in  the  worship 
of  beauty,  though  sometimes  weak,  is  always"  honourable 
and  amiable,  and  the  exact  reverse  of  the  false  Puri- 
tanism, which  consists  in  the  dread  or  disdain  of  beauty. 
And  in  order  to  treat  my  subject  rightly,  I  ought  to 
proceed  from  the  skill  of  art  to  the  choice  of  its  subject, 
and  show  you  how  the  moral  temper  of  the  workman  is 
shown  by  his  seeking  lovely  forms  and  thoughts  to 
express,  as  well  as  *by  the  force  of  his  hand  in  expression. 
But  I  need  not  now  urge  this  part  of  the  proof  on  you, 
because  you  are  already,  I  believe,  sufficiently  conscious  of 
the  truth  in  this  matter,  and  also  I  have  already  said 
enough  of  it  in  my  writings ;  whereas  I  have  not  at  all 
Baid  enough  of  the  infallibleness  of  fine  technical  work 
as  a  proof  of  every  other  good  power.  And  indeed  it 
was  long  before  I  myself  understood  the  true  meaning  of 


ART   TO   MORALS.  79 

the  j)ride  of  the  greatest  men  in  their  n\ere  execution, 
Bhowi.,  for  a  permanent  lesson  to  ns,  in  the  stories 
whicli,  whether  true  or  not,  indicate  with  absolute 
accuracy  the  general  couAdction  of  great  artists; — the 
■-tf)ries  of  the  contest  of  Apelles  and  Protogenes  in  a  line 
dill}',  (of  which  I  can  promise  you,  you  shall  know  the 
meaning  to  some  purpose  in  a  little  while), — the  story 
t)f  the  circle  of  Giotto,  and  especially,  which  you  may 
perhaps  not  have  observed,  the  expression  of  Diirer  in 
his  inscription  on  the  drawings  sent  him  by  Raphael. 
These  figures,  he  says,  'Raphael  drew  and  sent  to 
Albert  Diirer  in  Niirnberg,  to  show  him' — "NYhat?  Not 
his  invention,  nor  his  beauty  of  expression,  but  '  sein 
[land  zu  weisen,'  '  To  show  him  his  hand.''  And  yon 
will  find,  as  you  examine  farther,  that  all  inferior  artists 
are  continually  trying  to  escape  from  the  necessity  of 
sound  work,  and  either  indulging  themselves  in  their 
delights  in  subject,  or  pluming  themselves  on  their 
noble  moti^•es  for  attempting  what  they  cannot  perform  ; 
(and  observe,  by  the  way,  that  a  great  deal  of  what  ia 
mistaken  for  conscientious  motive  is  nothing  but  a  very 
[)estilent,  because  very  subtle,  condition  of  vanity) ;  where- 
as the  great  men  always  understand  at  once  that  the 
Hrst  moi-ality  of  a  painter,  as  of  everybody  else,  is  to 
\<\U)\v  his  business;  and  so  earnest  are  they  in  this,  that 
ri.any,  whose  lives  you  would  think,  by  the  results  of  their 
n-ork,  had  been  passed  in  strong  emotion,  have  in  roalitv 
siibdned  themselves,  though  capal)le  of  the  very  strongest 


80  •     THE   KELATTON   OF 

passions,  into  a  calm  as  absolute  as  that  of  a  deeplA 
sheltered  mountain  lake,  which  reflects  ever}-  agitatior 
of  the  clouds  in  the  sky,  and  e\erj  change  of  the  shadowt 
on  the  hills,  but  is  itself  motionless, 

75.  Finally,  you  must  remember  that  great  obscurit} 
has  been  brought  upon  the  truth  in  this  matter  by  the 
want  of  integrity  and  simplicity  in  our  modern  life.  1 
mean  integrity  in  the  Latin  sense,  wholeness.  Everything 
is  broken  up,  and  mingled  in  confusion,  both  in  our 
habits  and  thoughts;  besides  being  in  great  part  imita- 
tive :  so  that  you  not  only  cannot  tell  what  a  man  is,  but 
sometimes  you  cannot  tell  whether  he  is,  at  all ! — whetlier 
you  have  indeed  to  do  with  a  spirit,  or  only  witli  an 
echo.  And  thus  the  same  inconsistencies  appear  now, 
between  the  work  of  artists  of  merit  and  tlieir  pers<»nal 
characters,  as  those  which  you  find  continually  dis- 
appointing expectation  in  the  lives  of  men  of  modei-n 
literary  power ; — the  same  conditions  of  society  ha\ing 
obscured  or  misdirected  the  best  qualities  of  the  im- 
agination, both  in  our  literature  and  art.  Thus  thf^re  is 
no  serious  question  with  any  of  us  as  to  the  personal 
character  of  Dante  and  Giotto,  of  Sliakespeare  and 
Holbein;  but  we  pause  timidly  in  the  attempt  to 
analyse  the  moral  laws  of  the  art  skill  in  recent  poets, 
novelists,  and  painters. 

76.  Let  me  assure  you  once  for  all,  that  as  you  grow 
older,  if  you  enable  yom-selves  to  distinguish,  by  the  ti-uth 
of  your  own  lives,  what  is  true  in  those  of  other  men. 


ART    TO    MORAXS.  8] 

\ou  will  gradually  perceive  that  all  good  has  its  origir.  in 
good,  never  in  evil ;  that  the  fact  of  either  literatni-e  or 
iiaintino-  beins:  truly  fine  of  tlieir  hind,  whatever  theii 
mistaken  aim,  or  partial  error,  is  proof  of  their  nohhj 
ori<nn:  and  that,  if  there  is  indeed  sterling  value  in  the 
tiling  done,  it  has  come  of  a  sterling  worth  in  the  son"' 
that  did  it,  however  alloyed  or  defiled  l)y  conditions  of 
sin  which  are  sometimes  more  appalling  or  more  strange 
than  those  which  all  may  detect  in  their  own  hearts, 
l)ecause  they  are  part  of  a  personality  altogether  largei 
than  ours,  and  as  far  beyond  our  judgment  in  its  dark- 
ness as  l)eyond  our  following  in  its  light.'  And  it  ia 
sullicient  warning  against  what  some  might  dread  as  the 
probable  effect  of  such  a  conviction  on  your  own  minds, 
namely,  that  you  might  permit  yourselves  in  the  weak- 
nesses which  yon  imagined  to  be  allied  to  genius,  when 
they  took  the  form  of  personal  temptations ; — it  is  surely, 
r  say,  suflicient  warning  against  so  mean  a  folly,  to 
discern,  as  you  inay  with  little  pains,  that,  of  all  human 
existcmces,  the  lives  of  men  of  that  distorted  and  tainted 
no])ility  of  intellect  are  probably  the  most  miserable. 

77.  T  pass  to  the  second,  and  for  us  the  more  prac- 
ticallv  important  question.  What  is  the  effect  of  noble  art 
upon  other  men;  what  has  it  done  for  national  morality 
in  time  past ;  and  what  effect  is  the  extended  knowledge 
jv  possession  of  it  likely  to  have  upon  us  now?  And 
here  we   are   at   once   met    by  the    facts,  which   are   aa 

gloomy  ao  indisputable,  that,  while  many  peasant  popu 
4* 


82  THE   RELATION   OF 

lations,  among  whom  scarcely  the  rude&t  piactice  of  ai*1 
has  ever  been  attempted,  have  lived  in  c;)inparative  in- 
nocence, honour,  and  happiness,  the  worst  foulness  and 
cruelty  of  savage  tribes  have  been  frequently  associated 
with  fine  ingenuities  of  decorative  design ;  also,  that  no 
people  has  ever  attained  the  higher  stages  of  art  skill, 
except  at  a  period  of  its  civilisation  which  was  sullied  by 
frequent,  violent,  and  even  monstrous  crime ;  and,  lastly, 
that  the  attaining  of  perfection  in  art  power,  lias  been 
hitherto,  in  every  nation,  the  accurate  signal  of  the  begin- 
ning of  its  ruin. 

78.  Respecting  which  phenomena,  obser\e  first,  that 
although  good  never  springs  out  of  evil,  it  is  developed 
to  its  highest  by  contention  with  evil.  There"  are  some 
groups  of  peasantry,  in  far-awa}'^  nooks  of  Christian  coun- 
tries, who  are  nearly  as  innocent  as  lambs ;  but  the 
morality  which  gives  power  to  art  is  the  morality  of 
men,  not  of  cattle. 

Secondly,  the  virtues  of  the  inhabitants  of  many 
coimtry  districts  are  apparent,  not  real ;  their  livcj  are 
indeed  artless,  but  not  innocent ;  and  it  is  only  tho  mo- 
ii(>t()ny  of  circumstances,  and  the  absence  of  tempralion, 
which  prevent  the  exhibition  of  evil  passions  nf>t  less 
real  because  often  dormant,  nor  less  foul  because  s'aowd 
only  in  petty  faults,  or  inactive  malignities. 

79.  But  you  will  observe  also  that  absolute  artlessness, 
to  men  in  any  kind  of  moral  health,  is  impossible :  they 
have  always,  at  least,  the  art  by  which   they  li\e-  agri 


ART    TO    MORALS.  ftb 

(uilture  or  seamanship;  and  in  these  industries,  skilhdlj 
practised,  you  will  finJ  the  law  of  their  moral  trainin<i,' ; 
while,  whatever  the  ad\ersity  of  circumstances,  every 
rightly-minded  peasantry,  such  as  that  of  Sweden,  Den 
mark,  Bavaria,  or  Switzerland,  has  associated  with  its 
needful  industry  a  quite  studied  school  of  pleasurable  art 
in  dress  ;  and  generally  also  in  song,  and  simple  domestic 
ai-chitecture, 

80.  Again.  I  need  not  repeat  to  you  here  what  I 
endeavoured  to  explain  in  the  first  xccture  in  the  book 
I  called  '  The  Two  Paths,'  respecting  the  arts  of  savage 
races  :  but  I  may  now  note  briefly  that  such  arts  are  the 
result  of  an  intellectual  activity  which  has  found  no  room 
to  expand,  and  which  the  tyranny  of  nature  or  of  man 
has  condemned  to  disease  through  arrested  growth.  And 
where  neither  Christianity,  nor  any  other  religion  con- 
\ e}ing  some  moral  help,  has  reached,  the  animal  energy 
of  such  races  necessarily  liames  into  ghastly  conditions 
of  e\'il,  and  the  grotescpie  or  frightful  forms  assumed  I)}' 
their  art  are  precisely  indicative  of  their  distorted  moral 
nature. 

81.  But  the  truly  great  nations  nearly  ah 'ays  begin 
fi'oni  a  race  possessing  this  imaginative  power;  and  f<ir 
Bome  time  their  progress  is  vei-y  slow,  and  their  state  nv)1 
one  of  innocence,  but  of  feverish  and  faultfiil  iinimal 
energy.  This  is  gradually  subdued  and  exalted  into  bright 
human  life;  the  art  instinct  ])niifying  itself  with  the 
rest    of    the    nature,    until    social     perfectness    is    nearly 


84  THE    i^ELATION    OF 

reached  ;  and  llieii  c*  nics  the  pcricd  M'lien  conscience  and 
intellect  are  so  liigldy  dcvelojjcd,  that  new  forms  of 
error  begin  in  the  inability  to  fulfil  the  demands  of  tJie 
one,  or  to  answer  the  donbts  of  the  otlier.  Then  the 
wholeness  of  the  people  is  lost ;  all  kinds  of  h}q3ocrisiea 
and  oppositions  of  science  develo])e  themselves ;  their 
faith  is  ({nestioned  on  one  side,  and  compromised  with 
on  the  other;  wealth  commonly  increases  at  the  same 
period  to  a  destructive  extent ;  luxury  follows  ;  and  the 
ruin  of  the  nation  is  then  certain  :  while  the  arts,  all 
this  time,  are  simply,  as  I  said  at  first,  the  exponents  of 
each  phase  of  its  moral  state,  and  no  more  control  it  in 
its  political  career  than  the  gleam  of  the  firefly  guides  its 
oscillation.  It  is  true  that  their  most  splendid  results 
are  usually  obtained  in  the  swiftness  of  the  power  which 
is  hu)'r}ing  to  the  precipice ;  but  ti-^  lay  the  charge  of 
the  catastrophe  to  the  art  by  which  it  is  illumined,  is  to 
tind  a  cause  for  the  cataract  in  the  hues  of  its  iris.  It 
is  true  that  the  colossal  vices  belonging  to  periods  of 
great  national  wealtli  (for  wealth,  you  will  find,  is  the 
real  root  of  all  evil)  can  turn  every  good  gift  and  skill 
of  nature  or  of  man  to  e\il  piii-pose.  If.  in  such  times, 
fair  pictures  have  been  nn'sused,  how  much  more  fair 
realities?  And  if  Miranda  is  innnoral  to  Caliban,  is  that 
Miranda's  fault? 

82.  And  I  could  easily  go  on  to  trace  for  you  wliat, 
Rt  the  moment  I  speak,  is  sigjiified,  in  our  own  national 
ehai-actei',  by  the  forms  of  art,  and  unhappily  also  by  the 


ART    TO    MORALS.  8t 

fomis  of  what  is  not  art,  but  uTex,*t<*,  that  exist  araons 
us.  But  the  more  important  questi(jn  is,  What  will  be 
signified  by  them ;  what  is  there  in  us  now  of  worth 
and  strength  whicli,  under  our  new  and  partly  accidental 
impulse  towards  formative  labor,  may  be  by  that  ex- 
pressed, and  by  that  fortified? 

Would  it  not  be  well  to  know  tliis  ?  Nay,  irrespective 
of  all  future  work,  is  it  not  the  first  thing  we  should 
want  to  know,  what  stuff  we  are  made  of — how  far  we 
are  iyetSei  or  xxxm — ^good,  or  good  for  nothing?  We 
may  all  know  that,  each  of  ourselves,  easily  enough,  if 
we  like  to  put  one  grave  question  well  home. 

83.  Supposing  it  were  told  any  of  you  by  a  phy- 
sician whose.word  you  could  not  but  trust,  that  you  had 
not  more  than  seven  days  to  live.  And  suppose  also 
that,  by  the  manner  of  your  education  it  had  happened 
to  you,  as  it  has  happened  to  many,  never  to  have  heard 
of  any  futm-e  state,  or  not  to  have  credited  what  you 
heard ;  and  therefore  that  you  had  to  face  this  fact 
of  the  approach  of  death  in  its  simplicity:  fearing  no 
punishment  for  any  sin  that  you  might  have  beftu-e 
committed,  or  in  the  coming  days  might  determine  to 
commit ;  and  ha^nng  similarly  no  hope  of  reward  for 
past,  or  yet  possible,  virtue ;  nor  even  of  any  conscious- 
ness whatever  to  be  left  to  you,  after  the  seventh  day 
had  ended,  either  of  the  results  of  your  acts  to  those 
whom  you  loved,  or  of  the  feelings  of  any  survivors 
towai-ds  you.     Then   the   manner   in    which   yo/i   would 


86  THE    RELATFOX    OF 

Spend  the  seven  days  is  an  exact  measure  oi  the  inoialitj 
of  your  nature. 

84.  T  know  that  some  of  yon,  and  I  believe  the 
greater  mimber  of  yon,  wonld,  in  such  a  case,  spend  tlio 
^-•ranted  days  entirely  as  yon  onglit.  Neither  in  nnm 
hei'ing  the  errors,  or  deploring  the  pleasnres  of  the  past; 
nor  in  grasping  at  vile  good  in  the  present,  nor  vainly 
lamenting  the  darkness  of  the  fntnre  ;  but  in  instant  and 
earnest  execution  of  whatever  it  inight  be  possible  for 
you  to  accomplish  in  the  time,  in  setting  your  affaii'S 
in  order,  and  in  providing  for  the  future  comfort,  and 
--so  far  as  you  might  by  any  message  or  record  of 
yourself,  for  the  consolation — of  those  whom  you  loved, 
and  by  ^\'hom  yon  desired  to  be  remembered,  not  for 
}our  good,  but  for  theirs.  How  far  }'ou  might  fail 
through  human  weakness,  in  shame  for  the  past,  despair 
at  the  little  that  could  in  the  remnant  of  life  be  accom- 
plished, or  the  intolerable  pain  of  broken  affection,  would 
depend  wholly  on  the  degi-ec  in  which  your  nature  had 
been  depressed  or  fortified  by  the  manner  of  your  past 
life.  But  I  think  there  are  few  of  you  who  would  i)"t 
spend  those  last  clays  l)otter  than  all  that  had  preced(^d 
them. 

85.  If  you  look  accurately  through  the  records  of  the 
lives  that  have  been  most  useful  to  humanity,  you  w^ll 
find  that  all  that  has  been  done  best,  has  been  done  so ; 
— that  to  the  clearest  intellects  and  highest  souls, — ^tc 
tlio  true  children  of   the  Father,  \vith  whom  a  thousand 


AET   TO    MORALS.  811 

years  are  as  one  day,  their  poor  seventy  years  are  but 
as  seven  days.  The  removal  of  the  shadow  of  death 
from  them  to  an  uncertain,  but  always  narrow,  distance, 
never  takes  away  from  them  their  intuition  of  *ts 
approach ;  the  extending  to  them  of  a  iew  houra  more 
( II-  less  of  light  abates  not  their  acknowledgment  of  the 
infinitude  that  must  remain  to  be  known  beyond  their 
knowledge, — done  beyond  theii*  deeds :  the  unprofitableness 
( >f  their  momentary  service  is  wrought  in  a  magnificent 
ilespair,  and  their  very  honour  is  bequeathed  by  them  for 
tlie  joy  of  others,  as  they  lie  down  to  their  rest,  regarding 
for  themselves  the  voice  of  men  no  more. 

86.  The  best  things,  I  repeat  to  you,  have  been  done 
tlnis,  and  therefore,  sorrowfull}^  But  the  greatest  part 
of  the  good  work  of  the  world  is  done  either  in  pure 
and  unvexed  instinct  of  duty,  '  I  have  stubbed  Thornaby 
waste,'  or  else,  and  better,  it  is  cheerful  and  helpful  doing 
of  what  the  hand  finds  to  do,  in  surety  that  at  evening 
time,  whatsoever  is  right,  tlie  Master  will  give.  And 
tliat  it  be  worthily  done,  depends  wholly  on  tliat  ultimate 
quantity  of  worth  which  you  can  measure,  each  in  him- 
self, by  the  test  I  have  just  given  you.  For  tliat  test, 
Ml)scrve,  M'ill  mark  to  you  the  precise  force,  first  of  your 
absolute  courage,  and  then  of  the  energy  in  you  for  the 
right  ordering  of  things,  and  the  kindly  dealing  with 
Ircrsons.'  You  have  cut  away  from  these  two  instincts 
every  selfish  or  common  motive,  and  left  nothing  but  tlie 
energies  of  Order  and  of  Love. 


88  THE    RELATION    OF 

87.  Now,  where  those  two  roots  are  set,  all  the  othei 
powers  and  desires  find  right  nonrishment,  and  become 
to  their  own  ntmost,  helj^f  ul  to  others  and  pleasurable  tc 
oui-selves.  And  so  far  as  those  two  springs  of  action 
are  not  in  us,  all  other  powers  become  corrupt  or  dead ; 
even  the  love  of  truth,  apart  from  these,  hardens  into  an 
insolent  and  cold  avarice  of  kno^vledge,  ^vhich  unused,  is 
more  vain  than  unused  gold. 

88.  These,  then,  are  the  two  essential  instincts  of 
humanity:  the  love  of  Order  and  the  love  of  Kindness. 
By  the  love  of  order  the  moral  energ}'  is  to  deal  with 
the  earth,  and  to  dress  it,  and  keep  it;  and  with  all 
rebellious  and  dissolute  forces  in  loAver  creatures,  or  in 
ourselves.  By  the  love  of  doing  kindness  it -is  to  deal 
rightly  with  all  surrounding  life.  And  then,  grafted  on 
these,  we  are  to  make  every  other  passion  perfect;  so 
that  they  may  every  one  have  full  strength  and  yet  be 
absolutely  under  control. 

89.  Every  one  must  be  strong,  every  one  perfect,  every 
one  obedient  as  a  war  horse.  And  it  is  among  the 
most  beautiful  pieces  of  mysticn'sm  to  which  eternal  truth 
is  attached,  that  the  chariot  race,  which  Plato  uses  as 
an  image  of  moral  government,  and  which  is  indeed  the 
most  perfect  type  of  it  in  any  \'isible  skill  of  men, 
should  have  been  made  by  the  Greeks  the  continual 
subject  of  their  best  poetry  and  best  art.  Neverthelesa, 
Plato's  use  of  it  is  not  altogether  true.  There  is  no 
black   horse   in   the    chariot   of   the    soul.     One   of   the 


ART   TO    MORALS.  89 

driver's  worst  faults  is  in  starving  his  hoi-ses ;  an»)ther, 
in  not  breaking  them  early  enough;  bnt  they  are  al! 
good.  Take,  for  exain])le,  one  nsiiall}-  thought  of  ag 
wholly  evil — that  of  Anger,  leading  to  vengeance.  I 
believe  it  to  be  qnite  one  of  the  crowning  wickednesses 
1  /f  this  age  that  we  have  starved  and  chilled  our  f acnlt\ 
of  indignation,  and  neither  desire  nor  dare  to  punish 
crimes  justly.  We  have  taken  up  the  benevolent  idea, 
forsooth,  that  justice  is  to  be  preventive  instead  of  vin- 
dictive ;  and  we  imagine  that  we  arc  to  punish,  not  in 
anger,  but  in  expediency ;  not  that  we  may  give  de 
serNed  pain  to  the  person  in  fault,  but  that  we  may 
frighten  other  people  from  committing  the  same  fault. 
The  beautiful  theory  of  tliis  non-vindictive  justice  is, 
that  having  convicted  a  man  of  a  crime  worthy  of  death, 
we  entirely  pardon  the  criminal,  restore  him  to  his  place 
in  our  affection  and  esteem,  and  then  hang  him,  not  as 
a  malefactor,  but  as  a  scarecrow.  That  is  the  theory. 
And  the  practice  is,  that  we  send  a  child  to  prison  for 
a  month  for  stealing  a  handful  of  walnuts,  for  fear  that 
other  children  should  come  to  steal  moi-e  of  our  walnuts. 
And  we  do  not  punish  a  swindler  for  ruining  a  thousand 
families,  because  we  think  swindling  is  a  wholesome 
excitement  to  trade. 

90.  But  all  true  justice  is  vindictive  to  vice  as  it  is 
rewarding  to  virtue.  Only — and  herein  it  is  distinguished 
from  personal  revenge — it  is  vindictive  of  the  wrong 
done    not  of  the  wronc:  done  to  iis.      It  is  the  national 


90  THE    KELATION    OF 

expression  of  deliberate  anger,  as  of  deliberate  gratitude ; 
it  is  not  exemplary,  or  even  corrective,  bnt  essentially 
retributive;  it  is  the  absolute  art  of  measured  recom- 
pense, gi^'ing  honour  whei-e  honour  is  due,  and  shame 
where  shame  is  due,  and  joy  whei'e  joy  is  due,  and  pain 
where  i)ain  is  due.  It  is  neitlier  educational,  for  men 
lire  to  l)e  educated  by  wholesome  haljit,  not  by  rewards 
and  punishments ;  nor  is  it  preventive,  for  it  is  to  be 
executed  without  regard  to  any  consequences  ;  but  only 
for  righteousness'  sake,  a  righteous  nation  does  judgment 
and  justice.  But  in  this,  as  in  all  other  instances,  the 
rightness  of  the  secondary  passion  depends  on  its  being 
grafted  on  those  two  primary  instincts,  the  Ljve  of  order 
and  of  kindness,  so  that  indignation  itself  is  against  the 
wounding  of  love.  Do  you  think  the  t^ii^n  'A;^;;Mi^o5  came 
( )f  a  hard  heart  in  Achilles,  or  the  '  Pallas  te  hoc  vulnere, 
Pallas,'  of  a  hard  heart  in  Anchises'  son? 

91.  And  now,  if  with  this  clue  through  the  labyrinth 
of  them,  you  remember  the  course  of  the  arts  of  great 
nations,  you  will  perceive  that  whatever  has  prospered, 
and  become  lovely,  had  its  beginning — for  no  other  was 
possible — in  the  love  of  order  in  material  things  asso- 
ciated wnth  true  Sikcciotuvv,  and  the  desire  of  beauty  in 
material  things,  which  is  associated  with  true  aifection, 
charitas ;  and  with  the  iimumerable  conditions  of  truo 
gentleness  expressed  by  the  different  uses  of  the  words 
X»P",  and  gratia.  You  will  find  that  this  love  of  beautj* 
is   an    essential   part  of   all  healthy  human  nature,  and 


ART   TO    MORALS.  91 

though  it  can  long  co-exist  with  states  of  life  in  man} 
other  respects  nnvirtnons,  it  is  itself  wholly  good  ; — tho 
direct  advei-sary  of  envy,  avarice,  mean  worldly  care,  and 
especially  of  ciuelty.  It  entirely  perishes  when  these  aie 
wilfully  indulged;  and  the  men  in  whom  it  has  beei 
most  strong  have  always  been  compassionate,  and  lovers 
of  justice,  and  the  earliest  discerners  and  declarers  of 
things  conducive  to  the  happiness  of  mankind. 

92.  Nearly  every  important  truth  respecting  the  lo\e 
of  beauty  in  its  familiar  relations  to  human  life  was 
mythically  expressed  by  the  Greeks  in  their  various 
accounts  of  the  parentage  and  offices  of  the  .Graces, 
But  one  fact,  the  most  vital  of  all,  they  could  not  h\ 
its  fulness  perceive,  namely,  that  the  intensity  of  other 
perceptions  of  beauty  is  exactly  commensurate  with  the 
imaginative  purity  of  the  passion  of  love,  and  with  the 
riinorleness  of  its  devotion.  They  were  not  fully  conscious 
of,  and  could  not  therefore  either  mythically  or  philo- 
sophically express,  the  deep  relation  within  themselves 
between  their  power  of  perceiving  beauty,  and  the  honour 
of  domestic  affection  which  found  their  sternest  themes 
of  tragedy  in  the  infringement  of  its  la\\s; — which  made 
\\\c  rape  of  Helen  the  chief  subject  of  their  epic  poetry^ 
and  which  fastened  their  clearest  symbolism  of  i-esurrec- 
tion  on  the  story  of  Alcestis.  Unhappily,  the  subordiiiatcj 
position  of  their  most  revered  women,  and  the  paitial 
corruption  of  feeling  towards  them  by  the  presence 
nf  coi-tain  other  singular  states  of  infen'or  passirm  which 


92  THE    RELATION    OF 

it  is  as  diflicult  as  grievouB  to  analyse,  arrested  the 
etliical  as  well  as  the  formative  progress  of  the  Greek 
iniiid ;  and  it  was  not  until  after  an  inter\  al  of  nearly 
two  thousand  years  of  various  error  and  pain,  that,  parti  v 
as  the  true  reward  of  Christian  warfare  nobly  sustained 
through  centuries  of  trial,  and  partly  as  the  ^■isionary 
culmination  of  the  faith  which  saw  in  a  maiden's  purity 
the  link  between  God  and  her  race,  the  highest  and 
holiest  strength  of  mortal  love  was  readied ;  and,  togethei 
with  it,  in  the  song  of  Dante,  and  the  painting  oi 
Bernard  of  Luino  and  his  fellows,  the  perception,  and 
embodiment  for  ever  of  whatsoever  things  are  pure 
whatsoever  things  are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  r)i 
good  report ; — that,  if  there  be  any  virtue,  and  if  there 
be  any  praise,  men  might  think  on  those  things. 

93.  You  probably  observed  the  expression  I  used  i 
moment  ago,  the  imaginative  purity  of  the  passion  oi 
love.  I  have  not  yet  spoken,  nor  is  it  possible  for  me 
to-day  to  speak  adequately,  of  the  moral  power  of  the  ima- 
gination :  but  you  may  for  yoursehes  enough  discern  its 
nature  merely  by  comparing  the  dignity  of  the  relations 
between  the  sexes,  from  their  lowest  le\el  in  moths  oi 
mollusca,  through  the  higher  creatures  in  whom  they 
become  a  domestic  influence  and  law,  up  to  the  love  of 
pure  men  and  women ;  and,  finally,  to  tlie  ideal  love 
which  animated  chivalry.  Throughout  this  vast  asceni 
It  is  the  gradual  increase  of  the  imaginative  faculty 
which  exalts  and  enlarges  the  authorit}'  of   the  passion 


AKT   TO    MORALS.  9b 

until,  at  its  height,  it  is  the  bulwark   of    patience,   the 
tutor  of  honour,  and  the  perfectness  of  praise. 

94.  You  will  find  farther,  that  as  of  love,  so  of  all 
the  other  passions,  the  right  go^•ernment  and  exaltatioi 
begins  in  that  of  the  Imagination,  which  is  lord  ovei 
them.  For  to  subdue  the  passions,  which  is  thought  so 
often  to  be  the  sum  of  duty  respecting  them,  is  pos- 
sible enough  to  a  proud  duluess;  but  to  excite  them 
lightly,  and  make  them  strong  for  good,  is  the  work  <jf 
the  unselfish  imagination.  It  is  constantly  said  thai 
human  nature  is  heartless.  Do  not  believe  it.  Iluinaii 
nature  is  kind  and  generous  ;  but  it  is  narrow  and  blind  ; 
and  can  only  with  difliculty  conceive  anything  but  ^\•hat 
it  immediately  sees  and  feels.  People  would  instautlv 
care  for  others  as  well  as  themsehes  if  only  they  could 
imagin/  others  as  well  as  themselves.  Let  a  child  fall 
into  th<3  river  before  the  roughest  man's  eyes; — he  will 
usually  do  what  he  can  to  get  it  out,  even  at  some  risk 
to  liiniself ;  and  all  the  town  will  triumph  in  the  saving 
of  one  little  life.  Let  the  same  man  be  shown  that 
hundreds  of  children  are  dying  of  fever  for  want  of 
s<-»me  sanitary  measure  which  it  will  cost  liim  trouble 
tu  urge,  and  he  ^^'ill  make  no  effort ;  and  probably  all 
tlie  town  would  I'esist  him  if  he  did.  So,  also,  the  liver 
of  many  deserving  wcnneu  are  passed  in  a  succession  of 
petty  anxieties  about  themselves,  and  gleaning  of  minute 
hiterests  and  mean  pleasures  in  their  imuiediate  circle, 
bec^auso   they   are   ne\er   taught   t<j   make    any  effort   tc 


94  TirE    RELATION-  OF 

look  beyond  it ;  or  to  know  any  tiling  ubout  the  might  v 
ivorld  in  which  their  lives  are  fading,  like  blades  of 
bitter  grass  in  fruitless  fields. 

95.  I  had  intended  to  enlarge  on  this — and  yet  more 
on  the  kingdom  which  every  man  holds  in  his  con- 
cepti^■e  faculty,  to  be  peopled  with  active  thoughts  and 
lovely  presences,  or  left  waste  for  the  springing  up  of 
those  dark  desii-es  and  dreams  of  which  it  is  written  that 
'every  imagination  of  the  thoughts  of  man's  heart  is 
e^dl  continually.'  True,  and  a  thousand  times  true  it 
is,  that,  here  at  least,  'greater  is  he  that  ruleth  his 
spirit,  than  he  that  taketh  a  city.'  But  this  you  can 
partly  follow  out  for  yourselves  without  help,  partly  we 
must  leave  it  for  future  enquiry.  I  press  to  the  con- 
clusion which  I  wish  to  leave  vnth  you,  that  all  you  can 
rightly  do,  or  honourably  become,  depends  on  the  govern- 
ment of  these  two  instincts  of  order  and  kindness,  by 
this  great  Imaginative  faculty,  which  gives  you  inheri 
tance  of  the  jDast,  grasp  of  the  present,  authority  over 
the  future.  Map  out  the  spaces  of  your  possible  lives 
by  its  help  ;  measure  the  range  of  their  possible  agency! 
On  the  walls  and  to^vers  of  this  your  fair  city,  there  is 
not  an  ornament  of  which  the  first  origin  may  not  be 
traced  back  to  the  thoughts  of  men  who  died  two 
thousand  years  ago.  Wliom  will  you  be  governing  by 
your  thoughts,  t^vo  thousand  years  hence  ?  Think  of  it, 
and  you  will  find  that  so  far  from  art  being  immoral, 
little  else  except  art  is  moral ;  that  life  with  n;t  indus^ry 


AKT   TO   M0RAI.8.  94 

is  guilt,  and  industry  without  art  is  brutality ;  and  ioi 
the  words  'gxxjd'  and  'wicked,'  used  of  men,  you  may 
almost  subttitute  the  words  'Makers'  or  '  Destroyers.'  Far 
the  greatei-  pait  uf  the  seeming  prosperity  of  the  world 
is,  so  far  as  uur  present  knowledge  extends,  vain ;  wholly 
useless  for  any  kind  of  good,  but  ha\'ing  assigned  to  it 
a  certain  inevitable  sequence  of  destruction  and  of  sorrow. 
Its  stress  is  only  the  stress  of  wandering  storm ;  its  beauty 
the  hectic  of  plague :  and  what  is  called  the  history  of 
mankind  is  too  often  the  record  of  the  whirlwind,  and 
the  map  of  the  spreading  of  the  leprosy.  But  underneath 
all  that,  or  in  naiTow  spaces  of  dominion  in  the  midst 
of  it,  the  work  of  every  man,  '  qui  non  accepit  in  vani- 
tatem  animam  suam,'  endures  and  prospers;  a  small 
remnant  or  green  bud  of  it  prevailing  at  last  over  evil. 
And  though  faint  with  sickness,  and  encumbered  in  ruin, 
the  true  workers  redeem  inch  by  inch  the  wilderness 
into  garden  ground ;  by  the  help  of  their  joined  hands 
the  order  of  all  things  is  surely  sustained  and  vitally 
expanded,  and  although  with  strange  vacillation,  in  tlie 
eyes  of  the  watcher,  the  morning  cometh,  and  also  the 
night,  there  is  no  hour  of  human  existence  that  does  not 
draw  on  towards  the  perfect  day. 

96.  And  perfect  the  day  shall  be,  when  it  is  of  all 
men  understood  that  the  beauty  of  Holiness  must  be  in 
labour  as  well  as  in  rest.  Nay !  Tuort^  if  it  may  be,  in 
labour ;  in  uur  sti'cngth,  rather  than  iu  our  weakness ; 
and  in  the  choice  of  what  we  shall  work  for  throu<^h  the 


96  THE  RELATION  OF  ABT  TO  M0RAL8. 

BIX  da}'3,  and  may  know  to  be  good  at  their  evening 
time,  than  in  the  choice  of  what  we  pray  for  on  the 
seventh,  of  reward  or  repose.  With  the  multitude  that 
keep  holiday,  we  may  perhaps  sometimes  vainly  have 
gone  up  to  the  house  of  the  Lord,  and  vainly  there 
asked  for  what  we  fancied  would  be  mercy;  but  for 
the  few  who  labour  as  their  Lord  would  have  them 
the  mercy  needs  no  seeking,  and  their  wide  home  nc 
hallowing.  Surely  goodness  and  mercy  &hal\Jbllow  them^ 
all  the  days  of  their  life;  and  they  shall  dwell  in  the 
houfle  of  the  Lord- -fob  eveb. 


'lUE  BSLATION   OF  ART  TO    USE 


TSB  RELATION  OF  ART  TO    USB. 

97.  OnB  subject  of  enquiry  to-day,  you  -will  re- 
member, is  the  mode  in  which  fine  art  is  founded  u])on, 
or  may  contribute  to,  the  practical  requirements  of 
human  life. 

Its  ofiices  in  this  respect  are  mainly  twofold ;  it 
gives  Forar*  to  knowledge,  and  Grace  to  utility ;  that 
is  to  say,  it  makes  permanently  visible  to  us  things 
which  otherwise  could  neither  be  described  by  our 
science,  nor  retained  by  our  memory ;  and  it  gives 
delightfulness  and  worth  to  the  implements  of  daily 
use,  and  materials  of  dress,  furniture,  and  lodging.  In 
the  first  of  these  ofiices  it  gives  precision  and  charm  to 
truth ;  in  the  second  it  gives  precision  and  charm  to 
service.  For,  the  moment  we  make  anything  useful 
thoroughly,  it  is  a  law  of  nature  that  we  shall  be 
pleased  with  ourselves,  and  with  the  thing  we  have 
made ;  and  become  desirous  therefore  to  adorn  or  com- 
plete it,  in  some  dainty  way,  with  finer  art  expressive 
of  our  pleasure. 

And   the  point  I  wish   chiefly  to  bring   before  you 


100  TELE   KELA'lION    OP 

to-day  is  this  close  aud  healtliy  connection  of  the  fine 
arts  with  material  use  ;  but  1  must  lirst  try  briefly  tc 
put  in  clear  liyht  the  function  of  art  in  giving  Form  to 
truth. 

98.  Much  that  I  have  hitherto  tried  to  teach  has 
neen  disputed  on  the  ground  that  I  lia\e  attached  too 
much  importance  to  art  as  representing  natural  facts, 
and  too  little  to  it  as  a  source  of  pleasure.  And  I 
wish^  in  the  close  of  these  four  prefatory  lectures^ 
strongly  to  assert  to  you,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  in  the 
time,  convince  you,  that  the  entii-e  vitality  of  art  de- 
pends npon  its  being  either  full  of  truth,  or  full  of 
use;  and  that,  however  pleasant,  wonderful,  or  impres- 
sive it  may  be  in  itself,  it  must  yet  be  of  inferior  kind, 
and  tend  to  deeper  inferiority,  unless  it  has  clearly  ^^ne 
of  these  main  objects, — either  to  state  a  true  thiny  or 
to'  adorn  a  serviceahle  one.  It  must  never  exist  al  )ne, 
— never  for  itself ;  it  exists  rightly  only  when  it  is  the 
means  of  knowledge,  or  tlie  grace  of  agency  for  life. 

99.  Now,  I  pi-ay  you  to  ol)Scr\e — for  though  I  have 
Baid  this  often  before,  I  ha\e  ne.er  yet  said  it  clearly 
enough-~every  good  piece  of  art,  to  whichever  of  these 
ends  it  may  be  directed,  involves  first  essentially  the 
evidence  of  human  skill,  and  the  formation  of  an  actually 
beautiful  thing  by  it. 

Skill,  and  beauty,  always  then;  and,  beyond  these,  the 
formative  arts  ha^•e  always  one  («  other  of  the  two 
objects  which  T  have  just  defined  to  you — truth,  or  ser 


ART   TO    USE.  101 

viceableness ;  and  without  these  aims  neither  the  skill 
nor  their  beanty  will  a\ail;  only  by  these  can  eithei 
legitimately  reign.  All  the  graphic  aits  begin  in  keep 
ing  the  outline  of  shadow  that  we  have  loved,  and  they 
end  in  giving  to  it  the  aspect  of  life  ;  and  all  the  ar 
jhitectural  arts  begin  in  the  shaping  of  the  cup  and 
rhe  platter,  and  they  end  in  a  glorified  roof. 

Therefore,  you  see,  in  the  graphic  arts  y(^u  have  Skill 
Beautj,  and  Likeness;  and  in  the  architectural  arts 
Skill,  Beauty,  and  Use;  and  you  viust  have  the  threo 
in  each  group,  balanced  and  co-ordinate ;  and  all  the 
chief  errors  of  art  consist  in  losing  or  exaggerating  one 
of  these  elements. 

100.  For  instance,  almost  the  whole  system  and  hope 
of  modern  life  are  founded  on  the  notion  that  you  may 
substitute  mechanism  for  skill,  photograph  for  picture, 
cast-iron  for  sculpture.  That  is  your  main  nineteenth- 
century  faith,  or  infidelity.  You  think  you  can  gel 
everything  by  grinding — music,  literature,  and  paint- 
ing. You  will  find  it  grievously  not  so;  you  can  get 
nothing  but  dust  by  mere  grinding.  Even  to  have  the 
barley-meal  out  of  it,  you  nuist  have  the  barley  first ; 
and  that  comes  by  growth,  not  grinding.  But  esscn 
tially,  we  have  lost  our  delight  in  Skill ;  in  that  ma 
jesty  of  it  which  I  was  trying  to  make  clear  to  you  in 
my  last  address,  and  which  long  ago  I  ti-ied  to  express, 
under  tlie  lieiid  of  ideas  of  power.  The  entire  sense  oi 
that,   we   have    lost,  because    we   ourselves   do   not   take 


102  THE   RELATION   OF 

pains  enough  to  do  right,  and  have  no  conception  ol 
what  the  right  costs;  so  that  all  the  joy  and  reverence 
we  ought  to  feel  in  looking  at  a  strong  man's  work 
have  ceased  in  us.  We  keep  them  yet  a  little  in  looking  at 
a  honeycomb  or  a  bird's-nest ;  we  understand  that  these 
differ,  by  divinity  of  skill,  from  a  lump  of  wax  or  a 
cluster  of  sticks.  But  a  picture,  which  is  a  much  more 
wonderful  thing  than  a  honeycomb  or  a  bird's-nest,- - 
have  we  not  known  people,  and  sensible  people  too, 
who  expected  to  be  taught  to  produce  that,  in  six 
lessons  ? 

101.  Well,  you  must  have  the  skill,  you  must  have 
the  beauty,  which  is  the  highest  moral  element;  and 
then,  lastly,  you  must  have  the  verity  or  utility,"  which  is 
not  the  moral,  but  the  vital  element ;  and  this  desire  for 
v^erity  and  use  is  the  one  aim  of  the  three  that  always 
leads  in  great  schools,  and  in  the  minds  of  great  mas- 
ters, without  any  exception.  They  will  permit  them- 
selves in  awkwardness,  they  will  permit  themselves  in 
ugliness ; — but  they  will  never  permit  themselves  in  use 
lessness  or  in  un  veracity. 

102.  And  farther,  as  their  skill  increases,  and  as 
their  grace,  so  much  more,  their  desire  for  truth.  It 
is  impossible  to  find  the  three  motives  in  fairer 
balance  and  harmony  than  in  our  own  Reynolds.  He 
rejoices  in  showing  you  his  skill ;  and  those  of  you 
who  succeed  in  learning  what  painters'  work  really  is 
will  cnc  day  rejoice  also,  even  to  laughter — that  highest 


AKT   TO   USE.  105 

.aiighter  which  sprinc^s  of  Y)ure  delight,,  in  watching  the 
fni-titude  and  the  fire  of  a  hand  which  strikes  fortli  its 
will  npon  the  canvas  as  easily  as  the  wind  strikes  it 
on  the  sea.  lie  rejoices  in  all  abstract  V)eanty  and 
rhythm  and  melody  of  design;  he  will  never  give  yon 
a  colour  that  is  not  lovely,  nor  a  shade  that  is  unneces- 
sary, nor  a  line  that  is  ungraceful.  But  all  his  power 
and  all  his  invention  are  lield  by  him  subordinate, — 
and  the  more  obediently  because  of  their  nobleness, — 
to  his  true  leading  purpose  of  setting  before  you  such 
likeness  of  the  living  presence  of  an  English  gentleman 
or  an  English  lady,  as  shall  be  worthy  of  being  looked 
upon  for  ever. 

103.  But  farthei",  you  remember,  I  hope — for  I  said 
it  in  a  way  that  I  thouglit  would  shock  you  a  little, 
that  you  might  remember  it — my  statement,  that  art 
had  never  done  more  than  tliis,  never  moi'e  than  given 
the  likeness  of  a  noble  human  being.  Not  only  so, 
but  it  very  seldom  does  so  much  as  this;  and  the  best 
pictures  that  exist  of  the  great  schools  are  all  portraits, 
or  groups  of  portraits,  often  of  very  simple  and  nowise 
noble  persons.  You  may  have  much  more  bj-illiant 
and  impressive  qualities  in  imaginative  pictures;  you 
may  have  figures  scattered  like  clouds,  or  garlanded 
like  flowers;  you  may  have  light  and  shade,  as  of 
a  tempest,  and  C(;lour,  as  of  the  rainbow ;  but  all 
that  is  child's  play  to  the  great  men,  though  it  ia 
astonishment  to   us.     Their   real    strength    is    tried    tC 


104  THE   RELATION   OF 

the  utmost,  and  as  far  as  I  know  it  is  never  elsewliert' 
brought  out  so  thoroughly,  as  in  painting  one  man  or 
woman,  and  the  soul  that  was  in  them ;  nor  that 
always  the  highest  soul,  but  often  only  a  thwarted 
one  that  was  capable  of  height ;  or  perhaps  not  even 
that,  but  faultful  and  pool-,  3'et  seen  through,  to  the 
poor  best  of  it,  by  the  masterful  sight.  So  that  in 
order  to  put  before  you  in  your  Standard  series  the 
best  art  possible,  I  am  obliged,  even  from  the  very 
strongest  men,  to  take  the  portraits,  before  I  take  the 
idealism.  Nay,  whatever  is  best  in  the  great  com- 
positions themselves  has  depended  on  portraiture;  and 
the  study  necessary  to  enable  you  to  underst^and  inven- 
tion will  also  convince  you  that  the  mind  of  man  never 
invented  a  greater  thing  than  the  form  of  man,  ani- 
mated by  faithful  life.  Every  attempt  to  refine  or  exalt 
such  healthy  humanity  has  weakened  or  caricatured  it ; 
or  else  consists  only  in  giving  it,  to  please  our  fancy, 
the  wings  of  birds,  or  the  eyes  of  antelopes.  Whatever 
is  truly  great  in  either  Greek  or  Christian  art,  is  also 
restrictedly  human ;  and  even  the  raptures  of  the  re- 
deemed souls  who  enter,  '  celestemente  ballando,'  the 
gate  of  Angelico's  Paradise,  were  seen  first  in  the  ter- 
restrial, yet  most  pure,  mirth  of  Florentine  maidens. 

104.  I  am  aware  that  '■his  cannot  but  at  present 
appear  gravely  questionable  to  those  of  my  audience 
who  are  strictly  cognizant  of  the  phases  of  Greek  art; 
t  V  they  know  that  the  moment  of   its  decline  is  accn- 


AKf    TO    USE.  lOfi 

rately  marked,  by  its  tnrning  from  abstract  form  to 
portraiture.  But  the  reason  of  this  is  simple.  The  pro- 
gressive course  of  Greek  art  was  iu  subduing  monstrous 
conceptions  to  natural  ones  ;  it  did  this  by  general  laws  ; 
it  reached  absolute  truth  of  generic  human  form,  and 
if  its  ethical  force  had  remained,  would  have  advancea 
into  healthy  portraiture.  But  at  the  moment  of  change 
the  national  life  ended  in  Greece  ;  and  portraiture, 
there,  meant  insult  to  her  religion,  and  flattery  to  her 
tyrants.  And  her  skill  perished,  not  because  she 
became  true  in  sight,  but  because  she  became  vile  in 
heart. 

105.  And  now  let  us  think  of  our  own  work,  and 
ask  how  that  may  become,  in  its  own  poor  measure, 
active  in  some  verity  of  representation.  We  certainly 
cannot  begin  by  drawing  kings  or  cpieens  •  but  we  must 
try,  even  in  our  earliest  work,  if  it  is  to  prosper,  to  draw 
something  that  will  convey  true  knowledge  both  to  our- 
selves and  others.  And  I  think  you  will  find  greatest  ad- 
vantage in  the  endeavour  to  give  more  life  and  educational 
power  to  the  simpler  branches  of  natural  science :  for  the 
great  scientific  men  are  all  so  eager  in  advance  that  they 
have  no  time  to  popularise  their  discoveries,  and  if  we  can 
glean  after  them  a  little,  and  make  pictures  of  the  things 
which  science  describes,  we  shall  find  the  service  a  \vorthy 
one.  Not  only  so,  but  we  may  e\en  be  helpful  to  science 
herself;  for  she  has  suffered  by  her  proud  severance  from 
the  arts;  and  ha-snng  made  too  little  effort  to  realise  hei 


L06  IllE   RELATION    OF 

discoveries  to  vulgar  eves,  has  herself  lost  true  measure 
of  what  was  chiefly  preci(nis  in  them. 

106.  Take  Botany,  for  instance.  Our  scientific  b(»ta 
nists  are,  I  think,  chiefly  at  present  occupied  in  dis 
tinguishing  species,  which  perfect  methods  of  distinction 
Mnll  probably  in  the  future  show  to  be  indistinct;  —  in 
inventing  descriptive  names  of  which  a  more  ad^•anced 
science  and  more  fastidious  scholarship  will  show  some 
to  be  unnecessary,  and  others  inadmissible ;  —  and  in  mi- 
ci  ."^scopic  investigations  of  structure,  which  through  manv 
alternate  links  of  triumphant  discovery  that  tissue  s  com 
posed  of  vessels,  and  that  vessels  are  composed  of  tissue, 
have  not  hitherto  completely  explained  to  us  either  the 
origin,  the  energy,  or  the  course  of  the  sap ;  and  which, 
however  subtle  or  successful,  bear  to  the  real  natural  his- 
tory of  plants  only  the  relation  that  anatomy  and  organic 
chemistry  bear  to  the  history  of  men.  In  the  meantime, 
our  artists  are  so  generally  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the 
Darwinian  theory,  that  they  do  not  always  think  it  neces 
eary  to  show  any  difference  between  the  foliage  of  an  elm 
and  an  oak ;  and  the  gift-books  of  Christmas  have  every 
page  surrounded  with  laboriously  engraved  garlands  of 
rose,  shamrock,  thistle,  and  forget-me-not,  mthout  it& 
being  thought  proper  by  the  draughtsmen,  or  desii'able  by 
the  public,  even  in  the  case  of  those  uncommon  flowers, 
to  observe  the  real  shape  of  the  petals  of  any  one  of  them. 

107.  TTow  what  we  especially  need  at  present  for  edu- 
cational purposes  is  to  know,  not  the  anatomy  of  plants. 


AKT   TO    USE.  101 

out  their  biography — how  and  M'liere  they  live  and  die, 
their  tempers,  benevolences,  malignities,  distresses,  and 
nrtues.  We  want  them  drawn  from  their  yontli  tc 
tlieir  age,  from  l)iid  to  fruit.  AYe  onght  to  see  the 
vaiious  forms  of  their  diminished  but  hardy  growth  in 
cold  climates,  or  poor  soils ;  and  their  rank  or  wild 
luxuriance,  Avhen  full-fed,  and  warmly  nursed.  And  all 
this  we  ought  to  have  drawn  so  accurately,  that  we 
might  at  once  compare  any  given  part  of  a  plant  with 
the  same  part  of  any  other,  drawn  on  the  like  con- 
ditions. Now,  is  not  this  a  work  which  we  may  set 
about  here  in  Oxford,  with  good  hope  and  much  plea- 
sure? I  think  it  so  important,  that  tlie  first  exercise 
in  drawing  I  shall  put  before  you  will  be  an  outline 
of  a  laurel  leaf.  You  will  find  in  the  opening  sentence 
^f  Lionardo's  tieatise,  our  present  text-book,  that  you 
must  not  at  first  draw  from  nature,  hat  from  a  good 
master's  work,  '  per  assuefarsi  a  buone  membra,'  to 
accustom  yourselves,  that  is,  to  entirely  good  representa- 
ti\'e  organic  forms.  So  your  first  exercise  shall  l)c  the 
top  of  the  laurel  sceptre  of  Apollo,  drawn  by  an  Italian 
engraver  of  Lionardo's  own  time ;  then  we  Avill  draw  a 
laurel  leaf  itself;  and  little  by  little,  I  think  we  may 
both  learn  ourselves,  and  teach  to  many  besides,  somewhat 
more  than  we  know  yet,  of  the  wild  olives  of  Greece, 
and  the  wild  roses  of  England. 

108.     Next,  in   Geology,  which   I  will  take  leave   to 
consider  as  an  entirely  separate  science  from  the  zoology 


108  THE    RELATION    OF 

of  tliG  past,  which  lias  lately  usurped  its  Tiame  and 
interest  Tn  geology  itself  we  find  the  strength  of  raanj 
able  men  occupied  in  debating  questions  of  which 
there  are  yet  no  data  even  for  the  clear  statement;  and 
in  seizing  advanced  theoretical  positions  on  the  mere 
contingency  of  their  being  afterwards  tenable;  while,  in 
the  meantime,  no  simple  person,  taking  a  holiday  in 
Cumberland,  can  get  an  intelligible  section  of  Skiddaw, 
or  a  clear  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Skiddaw  slates ; 
and  while,  though  half  the  educated  society  of  London 
travel  every  summer  over  the  great  plain  of  Switzer- 
land, njne  know,  or  care  to  know,  why  that  is  a  plain 
and  the  Alps  to  the  south  of  it  are  Alps ;  and  whether  oi 
not  the  gravel  of  the  one  has  anything  to  do  with 
the  rocks  of  the  other.  And  though  every  palace  in 
Europe  owes  part  of  its  decoration  to  variegated  marbles, 
and  nearly  every  woman  in  Europe  part  of  her  decoration 
to  pieces  of  jasper  or  chalcedony,  I  do  not  think  any 
(j^eologist  ould  at  this  moment  with  authority  tell  us 
either  how  a  piece  of  marble  is  stained,  or  what  causes 
the  streaks  in  a  Scotch  pebble. 

109.  Now,  as  soon  as  you  have  obtained  the  power 
of  drawing,  I  do  not  say  a  mountain,  but  even  a  stone 
accurately,  every  question  of  this  kind  will  become  tc 
you  at  once  attractive  and  definile;  you  will  tind  that 
in  the  grain,  the  lustre,  and  the  cleavage-lines  of  the 
amallest  fragment  of  rock,  there  are  recorded  forces  of 
every  order  and  magnitude,  f)'om  those  which  raise  a  con 


AKT   TO    USE.  109 

tinent  by  one  volcanic  effoi't,  to  those  which  at  every  in 
stant  are  polishing  the  appai-oiitly  complete  crystal  in  iti 
nest,  and  conducting  the  apparently  motionless  metal  ir 
its  vein ;  and  that  only  by  the  art  r)f  your  own  hand,  and 
fidelity  of  sight  which  it  de\elopes,  yon  can  obtain  true 
perception  of  these  invincible  and  inimitable  arts  of  the 
earth  herself:  while  the  comparatively  slight  effort  ne- 
cessary to  obtain  so  much  skill  as  may  serviceably  draw 
mountains  in  distant  effect  will  be  instantly  rewarded  by 
what  is  almost  equivalent  to  a  new  sense  of  the  condi- 
ions  of  their  structiu-e. 

110.  And,  because  it  is  well  at  once  to  know  some 
directi(jn  in  which  our  work  may  be  definite,  let  mo 
suggest  to  those  of  you  who  may  intend  passing  their 
vacation  in  Switzerland,  and  who  care  about  moun- 
tains, that  if  they  will  fii-st  qualify  themselves  to  take 
angles  of  position  and  elevation  with  correctness,  and 
to  draw  outlines  with  approximate  fidelity,  there  are  a 
Beries  of  problems  of  the  highest  interest  to  be  worked 
out  on  the  southern  edge  of  the  Swiss  plain,  in  the 
study  of  the  relations  of  its  molasse  beds  to  the  rocks 
which  are  charactei'ii^tically  dc\  eloped  in  the  chain  of 
the  Stockhorn,  I>eatenberg,  Pilate,  Mythen  above 
Schwytz,  and  High  Sentis  of  Appenzell  ;  the  pursuit 
of  which  may  load  them  into  many  pleasant,  as  well  as 
creditably  dangerous,  walks,  and  curious  discoveries;  and 
will  be  good  for  the  discii)liiic  of  theii*  fingers  in  the 
pencilling  oi  crag  form. 


110  THE   RELATION   OF 

111.  I  wish  I  could  ask  yon  to  diaw,  instead  of  tht 

Alps,  the  crests  of  Parnassus  and  Olympns,  and  tht 
ravines  of  Delphi  and  of  Tempe.  I  have  not  loved 
the  arts  of  Greece  as  others  have ;  yet  I  love  them, 
and  her,  so  much,  that  it  is  to  me  simply  a  standing 
marvel  how  scholars  can  endure  for  all  these  centuries, 
during  which  their  chief  education  has  been  in  the  lan- 
guage and  policy  of  Gi'eece,  to  have  only  the  names  of 
her  hills  and  rivers  upon  their  lips,  and  never  one  line 
of  conception  of  them  in  their  mind's  sight.  Which  of 
us  knows  what  the  valley  of  Sparta  is  like,  or  the  great 
mountain  vase  of  Arcadia  ?  which  of  us,  except  in  mere 
airy  syllabling  of  names,  knows  aught  of  '  sandy  Ladon's 
lilied  banks,  or  old  Lycreus,  or  Cyllcne  hoar  ?'  '  You  can 
not  travel  in  Greece?' — I  know  it;  nor  in  Magna  Gne 
cia.  But,  gentlemen  of  England,  you  had  better  find 
out  why  you  cannot,  and  put  an  end  to  tliat  horror  of 
European  shame,  before  j'^ou  hope  to  learn  Greek  art. 

112.  I  scarcely  know  whether  to  place  among  the 
things  useful  to  art,  or  to  science,  the  systematic 
record,  ])y  drawing,  of  phenomena  of  the  sky.  But  I 
am  quite  sure  that  your  work  cannot  in  any  direction 
be  more  useful  to  yourselves,  than  in  enabling  you  to 
perceive  the  quite  unparalleled  subtilties  of  colour  and 
inorganic  form,  which  occur  on  any  ordinarily  fine 
morning  or  evening  horizon ;  and  I  will  even  confese 
to  you  another  of  my  perhaps  too  sanguine  expec 
taticns,  that  in  some  far  distant  time   it  mav    comp  to 


ART   TO    USE.  11 L 

pass,  that  yjuiig  Englishmen  and  Englishwome]i  ma- 
tliink  the  breath  of  the  morning  sky  pleasanter  than 
that  of  midnight,  and  its  liglit  prettier  than  that  of 
candles. 

113.  Lastly,  in  Zoology.  Whnt  the  Greeks  diji  for 
tlie  lioi'se,  and  wliat,  as  far  as  regards  domestic  and 
exprcssional  character,  Landsccr  has  done  for  the  dog 
and  the  deer,  remains  to  be  done  by  art  for  nearly  all 
othei-  animals  of  high  organisation.  There  are  few  birds 
or  beasts  that  have  not  a  range  of  character  which,  ii 
not  eqnal  to  that  of  the  horse  or  dog,  is  yet  as  interest 
ing  within  narrower  limits,  and  often  in  grotesqneness, 
intensity,  or  wild  and  timid  pathos,  more  singnlar  and 
mysterious.  "Wliatever  love  of  hnmonr  you  have, — 
\vliate\er  sympathy  \vitli  imperfect,  but  most  subtle, 
feeling, — whatever  perception  of  sublimity  in  conditions 
of  fatal  power,  may  liere  find  fullest  occupation:  all 
these  being  joined,  in  the  strong  animal  races,  to  a 
variable  and  fantastic  beauty  far  beyond  anything  that 
merely  formative  art  lias  yet  conceived.  I  have  placed 
Ml  your  Educational  sei-ies  a  wing  by  Albert  Diiro]-,  whicli 
goes  as  far  as  art  yet  has  readied  in  delineation  of 
plumage  ;  while  for  the  simple  action  of  the  pinion,  it 
is  impossible  to  go  beyond  what  has  been  done  already 
by  Titian  and  Tintoret ;  but  you  cannot  so  much  as 
once  look  at  the  rufflings  of  the  plumes  of  a  pelican 
pluming  itself  after  it  has  been  in  the  water,  or  care- 
fully draw  the  contoui\s  of  the  wing  either  of  a  vulture 


112  THE   RELATION    OF 

or  a  common  swift,  or  paint  the  rose  and  \  ermilion  oi 
that  of  a  flamingo,  witliout  receiving  almost  a  new  con 
ception  of  the  meaning  of  form  and  colonr  in  (rreation. 

114.  Lastly.  Yonr  work,  in  all  directions  I  have 
hitherto  indicated,  may  be  as  deliberate  as  yon  choose  ; 
there  is  no  immediate  fear  of  the  extinction  of  many 
species  of  flowers  or  animals ;  and  the  Alps,  and  \alley 
of  Sparta,  will  wait  your  leisure,  I  fear  too  long.  Bui 
the  feudal  and  monastic  buildings  of  Europe,  and  still 
more  the  sti'cets  of  lier  ancient  cities,  are  vanishing  like 
dreams :  and  it  is  diflicult  to  imagine  the  mingled  en^•y 
and  contempt  witli  which  future  generations  will  look 
back  to  us,  Nvho  still  possessed  such  things,  yet  made 
no  effort  to  preser\e,  and  scarcely  any  to  delineate 
them :  for,  when  used  as  material  of  landscape  by  the 
modern  artist,  they  are  nearly  always  superficially  or 
flatteringly  represented,  without  zeal  enough  to  penetrate 
tlieir  character,  or  patience  enough  to  render  it  in 
modest  harmony.  As  for  places  of  traditional  in- 
terest, I  do  not  know  an  entirely  faithful  drawing 
of  any  historical  site,  except  one  or  two  studies  jnade 
by  enthusiastic  young  painters  in  Palestine  and  Egypt : 
for  wliich,  thanks  to  them  always;  but  we  want  work 
nearer  home. 

115.  Now  it  is  quite  probable  that  some  of  you, 
who  will  not  care  to  go  through  the  labour  necessary 
to  draw  flowers  or  animals,  may  yet  have  ])leasure  in 
attaining   some   moderately   accurate   skill  of    sketching 


AKT   TO    USE.  113 

architecture,  and  greater  pleasure  still  in  directing  it 
usefully.  Suppose,  for  instance,  we  were  to  take  up  the 
historical  scenery  in  Carlyle's  '  Fredei-ick.'  Too  justly  the 
historian  accuses  the  genius  of  past  art,  in  tliat,  types 
of  too  many  such  elsewhere,  the  galleries  of  Berlin — 
'  are  made  up,  like  other  galleries,  of  goat-footed  Pan, 
Euroi)a's  Bull,  Romulus's  She- Wolf,  and  the  Correg- 
giosity  of  Correggio,  and  contain,  for  instance,  no  por- 
trait of  Friedrich  the  Great, —  no  likeness  at  all,  or 
next  to  none  at  all,  of  the  nohle  series  of  Human 
Realities,  or  of  any  part  of  them,  who  have  sprung, 
not  from  the  idle  brains  of  dreaming  dilettanti.,  but 
from  the  head  of  God  Almighty,  to  make  this  poor 
authentic  earth  a  little  memorable  for  us,  and  to  do  a 
little  work  that  may  be  eternal  there.'  So  Carlyle  tella 
us — -too  truly  !  We  cannot  now  draw  Friedrich  for  him, 
but  we  can  draw  some  of  the  old  castles  and  cities  that 
were  the  cradles  of  German  life — Ilohenzollern,  Ilapsburg, 
Marburg,  and  such  others ; — we  may  keep  some  authen- 
tic likeness  of  these  for  the  future.  Suppose  we  were  to 
take  up  that  first  volume  of  '  Friedrich,'  and  put  outlines 
to  it?  shall  we  begin  ])y  looking  for  Plenry  the  Fowler's 
tomb — Carlyle  himself  asks  if  he  has  any — at  Quedlin- 
burg,  and  so  downwards,  rescuing  what  we  can  ?  Tliat 
would  certaiidy  be  making  our  work  of  some  true  use. 
116.  But  I  have  told  you  enough,  it  seems  to  me, 
at  least  to-day,  of  this  function  of  art  in  recording  fact; 
"let  me  now  finally,  aud  with  all  distinctness  pos6il)le  t(i 


114  THE    KELATION    OF 

mc,  state  to  3-011  its  main  business  of  all ; — its  serx'ice  ii 
the  actual  uses  of  daih'  life. 

You  are  surprised,  perhaps,  to  hoar  me  call  this 
its  main  business.  That  is  indeed  so,  however.  The 
giving  brightness  to  picture  is  much,  but  the  gi^^ng 
brightness  to  life  more.  And  remember,  were  it  as 
patterns  only,  you  cannot,  without  the  realities,  ha\'e 
the  pictures.  You  cannot  have  a  landscape  by  Turner, 
without  a  country  for  him  to  paint ;  you  cannot  have 
a  portrait  by  Titian,  without  a  man  to  be  pourtrayed. 
I  need  not  prove  that  to  you,  I  suppose,  in  these  short 
terms ;  but  in  the  outcome  I  can  get  no  soul  to  belicA'e 
that  the  beginning  of  art  is  in  getting  our  country 
clean  and  our  people  beautiful,  I  have  been  ten  years 
trying  to  get  this  very  plain  certainty — I  do  not  say 
belie \-ed— but  even  thought  of,  as  anything  but  a  mon- 
strous proposition.  To  get  your  country  clean,  and 
jour  people  lovely ; — I  assure  you,  that  is  a  necessary 
work  of  art  to  begin  with !  There  has  indeed  been  art 
in  countries  where  people  lived  in  dirt  to  serve  God,  but 
ne^  er  in  countries  where  they  lived  in  dirt  to  serve  the 
devil.  There  has  indeed  been  art  ^^'here  the  people  were 
not  all  lovely, — where  even  their  lips  were  thick — and 
their  skins  black,  because  the  sun  had  looked  upon  them  ; 
out  never  in  a  country  where  the  people  were  pale  with 
miserable  toil  and  deadly  shade,  and  where  the  lips  oi 
youth,  instead  of  being  full  with  blood,  were  pinched 
by  famine,  or  warped  with  poison.     And  now,  therefore, 


ART    TO    USE.  Ill 

note  this  well,  the  gist  of  all  these  long  jrefatorj  talks 
I  said  that  the  two  great  iiu)ral  instincts  were  those  di 
Order  and  Kindness.  Now,  all  the  arts  are  fonnded  on 
agricnltnre  hy  the  hand,  and  on  the  graces,  and  kindness 
of  feeding  and  dressing,  and  lodging  your  people. 
Greek  art  l)egins  in  the  gardens  of  Alcinrms — perfect 
order,  leeks  in  beds,  and  fonntains  in  pipes.  And 
CJhristian  art,  as  it  arose  out  of  chivalry,  was  only  pos- 
8il)le  so  far  as  chivalry  compelled  both  kings  and  knights 
to  care  for  the  rigbt  personal  training  of  their  people; 
it  pei-ished  utterly  ^hen  those  kings  and  knights  became 
SiifA6^ipoi^  devourers  of  the  people.  And  it  will  become 
possible  again  onl}',  when,  literally,  the  sword  is  beaten 
into  the  ploughshare,  when  your  St.  George  of  Eng- 
land shall  justify  his  name,  and  Christian  art  shall  be 
known,  as  its  Master  was,  in  breaking  of  bread. 

117.  Now  look  at  the  working  out  of  this  bi'oad 
principle  in  minor  detail ;  observe  how,  from  highest  to 
lowest,  health  of  art  has  first  depended  on  i-efci'cnce  Ui 
industrial  use.  There  is  first  the  need  of  cup  and  platter, 
especially  of  cup;  for  you  can  put  your  meat  on  the 
Harpies',  or  any  other,  tables ;  but  you  must  have  your 
cup  to  drink  from.  And  to  hold  it  conveniently,  yew 
must  put  a  handle  to  it ;  and  to  fill  it  when  it  is  emptv 
you  must  have  a  large  pitcher  of  some  sort ;  and  to  cany 
the  pitcher  you  may  most  advisably  have  two  handh^s. 
Modify  the  fonns  of  these  needful  possessi(ms  acccrdinf* 
to   the    various    i-equiremcnts   of    drinking    largely   and 


116  THE    KELATION    OF 

drinking  delicately ;  of  pouring  easily  out,  or  of  keep 
ing  for  years  the  perfume  in ;  of  storing  in  cellars,  oi 
bearing  from  fomitains ;  of  sacrificial  libation,  of  Pan, 
atlienaic  treasure  of  oil,  and  sepulchral  treasure  of 
ashes  —and  you  have  a  resultant  series  of  beautiful  form 
and  decoration,  from  the  rude  amphora  of  red  earth  up 
lo  Cellini's  vases  of  gems  and  crystal,  in  which  series, 
but  especially  in  the  more  simple  conditions  of  it,  are 
developed  the  most  beautiful  lines  and  most  perfect 
types  of  severe  composition  which  liave  yet  been  attained 
by  art. 

118.  But  again,  that  you  may  fill  your  cup  with 
pure  water,  you  must  go  to  the  well  or  spring ;  you 
need  a  fence  round  the  well ;  you  need  some  tube  or 
trough,  or  other  jneans  of  confining  the  stream  at  the 
spring.  For  the  conveyance  of  the  current  to  any  dis- 
tance you  must  build  either  enclosed  or  open  aqueduct; 
and  in  the  hot  square  of  the  city  where  you  set  it  fi-ee, 
you  find  it  good  for  health  and  pleasantness  to  let  it 
leap  into  a  fountain.  On  these  several  needs  you  have 
a  school  of  sculpture  founded;  in  the  decoration  of  the 
walls  of  wells  in  le\el  countries,  and  of  the  sourci^s  of 
springs  in  mountainous  r»nes,  and  chiefly  of  all,  where  the 
women  of  household  or  market  meet  at  the  city  fountain. 
There  is,  however,  a  farther  reason  for  the  use  of  art 
fiere  than  in  any  other  material  service,  so  far  as  we 
may,  by  art,  express  our  re\erence  or  thankfulnefs. 
Whenever  a  nation  is  in  its   right  mind,  it  always  has 


Asrr  TO  USK. 


11? 


a  deep  sense  of  (ii^imty  in  the  sjift  of  rain  fi-om  heaven^ 
tilling  its  heart  with  food  and  gladi^ess;  and  all  the 
more  when  that  gift  becomes  geutlo  and  perennial  in 
the  flowing  of  springs.  It  liteiallj  is  not  possilde  that 
any  fruitful  powei-  of  the  Muses  should  be  i)ut  forth 
upon  a  people  which  disdains  their  Helicon  ;  still  less 
is  it  possible  that  any  Christian  nation  bhould  grow  up 
'tanquam  lignum  quod  plantatum  est  secus  decursus 
aquarum,'  which  cannot  recognise  the  lesson  meant  in 
their  being  told  of  the  places  whore  Kebekah  was  met ; 
— where  Eaehel, — where  Zipporah, — and  she  who  was 
asked  for  water  under  Mount  Gerizim  by  a  Stranger, 
weary,  who  had  nothing  to  draw  with. 

119.  And  truly,  when  our  mountain  springs  are  set 
apart  in  vale  or  craggy  glen,  or  glade  of  wood  green 
through  the  drought  of  sunnner,  far  from  cities,  then 
it  is  best  let  them  stay  in  their  own  happy  peace;  but 
if  near  towns,  and  liable  therefore  to  be  defiled  by  com- 
mon usaee,  we  could  not  use  the  loveliest  art  more 
worthily  than  by  sheltering  the  spring  and  its  first 
pools  with  precious  marbles:  nor  ought  anything  to  bo 
esteemed  more  important,  as  a  means  of  healthy  education, 
than  the  care  to  keep  the  streams  of  it  afterwards,  to  as 
great  a  distance  as  possible,  pure,  full  of  fish,  and  easily 
accessible  to  children.  There  used  to  be,  thirty  ycaj-a 
ago,  a  little  rivulet  of  the  Wandel,  about  an  inch  deep, 
which  ran  over  the  carriage-road  and  under  a  foot-bi-idge 
just  under  tlie  last  chalk  hill  near  Croydon.     Alas  1  men 


118  THE   KELATION    OF 

came  and  went ;  and  it — did  not  go  on  for  ever.  It  lias 
l(  Av^  since  been  bricked  over  by  tlie  parish  autli^  >rities ; 
but  there  was  more  education  in  that  stream  with  its 
minnows  than  yon  conld  get  ont  of  a  hnndred  pound? 
spent  yearly  in  the  parish  schools,  even  though  yon 
were  to  spend  every  farthing  of  it  in  teachiug  the  nature 
of  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  and  the  names,  and  rate  pei 
n^inute,  of  all  the  rivers  in  Asia  and  America. 

120.  Well,  the  gist  of  this  matter  lies  here  then.  Sup- 
[)')se  we  want  a  school  of  pottery  again  in  England,  all 
v;e  poor  artists  are  ready  to  do  the  best  we  can,  to  sliow 
}'ou  how  ]3retty  a  line  may  be  that  is  twisted  first  to  one 
side,  and  then  to  the  other;  and  how  a  plain  .household- 
blue  will  make  a  pattern  on  white;  and  how  ideal  art  may 
be  got  out  of  the  spaniel's  colours,  of  black  and  tan. 
ihit  I  tell  you  beforehand,  all  that  we  can  do  will  be 
utterly  useless,  unless  you  teach  your  peasant  to  say  grace, 
m  )t  only  before  meat,  but  before  drink ;  and  having  pro- 
\  ided  him  with  Greek  cups  and  platters,  pro^dde  him  also 
with  something  that  is  not  poisoned  to  put  into  them. 

121.  There  cannot  be  any  need  that  I  should  trace 
for  you  the  conditions  of  art  that  are  directly  founded 
on  ser\dceablenes8  of  dress,  and  of  armour;  but  it  is  my 
duty  to  affirm  to  you,  in  the  most  positive  manner,  that 
after  recovering,  for  the  poor,  wholesomeness  of  food,  your 
next  step  towards  f  oimding  schools  of  art  in  England  must 
be  in  recovering,  for  the  poor,  decency  and  wholesome- 
less  of  dress;  thoroughly  good   in  substauce,  fitted   foi 


ART   TO   USE.  lis 

tlicir  daily  \yoy\i,  becoming  to  tlieir  rank  in  life,  and  worn 
with  order  and  dignity.  And  this  order  and  dignity 
mnst  be  taught  them  by  the  women  of  the  upper  and 
middle  classes,  whose  minds  can  be  in  nothing  right, 
as  long  as  they  are  so  wrong  in  this  matter  as  to  endure 
the  squalor  of  the  p<:)or,  while  they  themselves  dress  gaily. 
And  on  the  proper  pride  and  comfort  of  both  poor  and 
rich  in  dress,  must  be  founded  the  true  arts  of  dress; 
carried  on  by  masters  of  manufacture  no  less  careful  oi 
the  perfectness  and  beauty  of  their  tissues,  and  of  all  that 
in  substance  and  in  design  can  be  bestowed  upon  them, 
than  ever  the  armourers  of  Milan  and  Damascus  w^erc 
careful  of  their  steel. 

122.  Then,  in  the  third  plaoe,  having  recovered  some 
wholesome  habits  of  life  as  to  food  and  dress,  we  must 
recover  them  as  to  lodging.  I  said  just  now  that  the 
best  architecture  was  but  a  glorified  roof.  Think  of  it. 
The  dome  of  the  Vatican,  the  porches  of  Rheims  or 
Ohai-trcs,  the  vaults  and  arches  of  their  aisles,  the  canop} 
of  the  tomb,  and  the  s])ire  of  the  belfry,  are  all  forme 
resulting  from  the  mere  requirement  that  a  certain  B})ace 
shall  be  strongly  covered  from  heat  and  rain.  More 
than  that — as  I  have  tried  all  through  'The  Stones  oi 
Venice'  to  show — the  lovely  f onus  of  these  were  every 
one  of  them  developed  in  civil  and  domestic  l»nildiiii: 
and  only  after  tlieir  invention  employed  ecclesiastical  1\ 
on  the  grandest  scale.  i  do  not  know  whether  you 
have  noticed,  but  I  think  y<^u  cannot  but  have  noticed 


120  THE   KELATION   OF 

hei-e  ill  Oxf(n'd,  as  elsewhere,  tliat  our  modern  architects 
never  seem  to  know  what  to  do  with  their  roofs.  B(. 
assured,  until  the  roofs  are  right,  nothing  else  will  be ; 
and  there  are  just  two  ways  of  keeping  them  right. 
Never  build  them  of  iron,  but  only  of  wood  or  stone ; 
and  secondly,  take  care  that  in  every  town  the  little 
roofs  are  built  before  the  large  ones,  and  that  every- 
body who  wants  one  has  got  one.  And  we  must  try 
also  to  make  everybody  want  one.  That  is  to  say,  at 
B(  >nie  not  very  advanced  period  of  life,  men  should  desire 
to  haN'e  a  home,  which  they  do  not  wish  to  quit  any 
more,  suited  to  their  habits  of  life,  and  likely  to  be 
more  and  more  suitable  to  them  until  their  death.  And 
men  must  desire  to  have  these  their  dwelling-places  built 
as  strongly  as  possible,  and  furnished  and  decorated 
daintily,  and  set  in  pleasant  places,  in  bright  light 
and  good  air,  being  able  to  choose  for  themselves  that 
at  least  as  well  as  swallows.  And  when  the  houses  are 
grouped  together  in  cities,  men  must  have  so  much  civic 
fellowship  as  to  subject  their  architecture  to  a  common 
law,  and  so  much  civic  pride  as  to  desire  that  the  whole 
gathered  group  of  hurrian  dwellings  should  be  a  lovely 
thing,  not  a  frightful  one,  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Not  many  weeks  ago  an  English  clergyman,  a  mastei 
of  this  University,  a  man  not  given  to  sentiment,  but 
of  middle  age,  and  great  practical  sense,  told  me,  by 
accident,  and  wholly  without  reference  to  the  subject 
now  before  us,  that  he  never  could  enter  London  from 


ART   TO    USB.  121 

his  counti7  pareoiiage  but  with  closed  eyes,  lest  the 
sio-ht  of  the  blocks  of  houses  which  the  railroad  inter- 
sected  in  the  suburbs  should  unfit  him,  by  the  horror  ol 
it,  for  his  day's  work. 

123.  Now,  it  is  not  possible — and  I  repeat  to  you, 
only  in  more  deliberate  assertion,  what  I  wrote  just 
twenty-two  years  ago  in  the  last  chapter  of  the  '  Seven 
Lamps  of  Arcliitecture' — it  is  not  possible  to  have 
any  right  morality,  happiness,  or  art  in  any  country 
where  the  cities  are  thus  built,  or  thus,  let  me  rather 
say,  clotted  and  coagulated ;  spots  of  a  di-eadf ul  mildew 
spreading  by  patches  and  blotches  over  the  country  they 
consume.  You  must  have  lovely  cities,  crystallised,  not 
coagulated,  into  form;  limited  in  size,  and  not  casting 
out  the  scum  and  scurf  of  them  into  an  encircling  erup- 
tion of  shame,  but  girded  each  with  its  sacred  pomce- 
rium,  and  with  garlands  of  gardens  full  of  blossoming 
trees,  and  softly  guided  streams. 

That  is  impossible,  you  say  !  It  may  be  so.  I  have 
nothing  to  do  with  its  possibility,  but  only  witli  its 
in  dispensability.  More  than  tliat  nmst  be  possible, 
however,  before  you  can  have  a  school  of  art ;  namely 
that  you  find  places  elsewhere  than  in  England,  or  at 
east  in  otherwise  unserviceable  parts  of  England,  for 
the  establishment  of  manufactories  needing  the  ]icl[)  of 
fire,  that  is  to  say,  of  aU  the  rix,f»i  ^xixvriKcu  and 
firlffijTti^  of  which  it  was  long  ago  known  to  Ite  the 
constant    nature    that    '  ocrxof^ixi  nxXirrx    '('xovri    xm    <ti>t' 


122  THE    RELATION    OF 

Keti  -/roXiut,  crvnir  fA.sXucrfcti^''  aiid  to  reducG  sucli  mami 
factures  to  their  lowest  limit,  so  that  nothii  g  may  evei 
be  made  of  iron  that  can  as  effectually  be  made  of  wood 
or  stone ;  and  nothing  moved  by  steam  that  can  be  as 
effectually  moved  by  natural  forces.  And  observe,  that 
for  all  mechanical  effort  required  in  social  life  and  in 
cities,  water  power  is  infinitely  more  than  enough ;  for 
anchored  mills  on  the  large  rivers,  and  mills  moved  by 
sluices  from  reservoirs  filled  by  the  tide,  will  give  you 
command  of  any  quantity  of  constant  motive  power  you 
need. 

Agriculture  by  the  hand,  then,  and  absolute  refusal 
or  banishment  of  unnecessary  igneous  force,  are  the  first 
conditions  of  a  school  of  art  in  any  country.  And  until 
you  do  this,  be  it  soon  or  late,  things  will  continue  in 
that  triumjjhaut  state  to  which,  for  want  of  finer  art. 
your  mechanism  has  brought  thein  ; — that,  though  Eng- 
land is  deafened  with  spinning  wheels,  her  people  have 
not  clothes — though  she  is  black  with  digging  of  fuel, 
they  die  of  cold — and  though  she  has  sold  lier  soul 
for  gain,  they  die  of  Inmgcr.  Stay  in  tliat  triumph,  if 
you  choose ;  but  be  assured  of  tliis,  it  is  not  one  Avhich 
'he  fine  arts  will  ever  share  with  you. 

124.  Now,  I  have  given  you  my  message,  containing, 
18  I  know,  offence  enough,  and  itself,  it  may  seem  to 
oaany,  unnecessary  enough.  But  just  in  proportion  to 
its  apparent  r  on -necessity,  and  to  its  certain  offence,  waa 
its   real  need,  and  my  real  duty  to  speak  it.     The  stud}' 


AKT   TO    USE.  123 

of  the  fine  arts  could  not  be  rightly  associated  with 
the  grave  work  of  English  Universities,  without  due 
and  clear  protest  against  the  misdirection  of  national 
energy,  which  for  the  present  renders  all  good  results 
of  such  study  on  a  great  scale,  impossible.  I  can 
easily  teach  you,  as  any  other  nir)derately  good  draughts- 
man could,  how  to  hold  your  pencils,  and  how  to  lay 
your  colours;  but  it  is  little  use  my  doing  that,  while 
the  nation  is  spending  millions  of  money  in  the  destruc* 
tion  of  all  that  pencil  or  colour  have  to  represent,  and 
in  the  promotion  of  false  forms  of  art,  which  are  only 
the  costliest  and  the  least  enjoyable  of  follies.  And 
therefore  these  are  the  things  that  I  haxe  first  and  last 
to  tell  you  in  this  place :— that  the  fine  arts  are  not  to 
be  learned  by  Locomotion,  but  by  making  the  homes  we 
live  in  lovely,  and  by  staying  in  them ; — that  the  fine 
aits  are  not  to  be  learned  by  Competition,  but  by  doing 
our  quiet  best  in  our  own  ^\•ay ; — that  the  fine  arts  are 
not  to  be  learned  by  Exhibition,  l)iit  by  doing  what  is 
right,  and  making  what  is  honest,  whether  it  be  ex- 
hibited or  not ; — and,  for  the  sum  of  all,  that  men  must 
paint  and  build  neither  for  pride  nor  for  money,  but 
for  love ;  for  love  of  their  art,  for  love  of  their  neigh- 
bour, and  whatever  better  love  may  be  than  these, 
founded  on  these.  I  know  that  I  gave  some  p«in, 
which  I  was  most  unwilling  to  give,  in  speaking  of 
the  possible  abuses  of  religious  art ;  but  there  can  be 
no  danger  of  any,  so   long   as  we  remember  that  God 


124  THE    RELATION    OF 

inhaljits  cottages  as  well  as  chnrches,  and  ought  to  bt 
well  lodged  there  also.  Begin  with  wooden  flooi's;  thfl 
tesselated  ones  will  take  care  of  themselves;  begin  with 
thatching  roofs,  and  yon  shall  end  by  splendidly  vault- 
ing them ;  begin  by  taking  care  that  no  old  eyes  fail 
over  their  Bibles,  nor  young  ones  over  their  needles,  for 
want  of  rushlight,  and  then  you  may  have  whatever  true 
good  is  to  be  got  out  of  coloured  glass  or  wax  candles. 
And  in  thus  putting  the  arts  to  universal  use,  you 
will  find  also  their  universal  inspiration,  their  universal 
benediction.  I  told  you  there  was  no  evidence  of  a 
sj)ecial  Divineness  in  any  application  of  them ;  that 
they  were  always  equally  human  and  equally  Divine; 
and  in  closing  these  inaugural  series  of  lectures,  into 
which  I  have  endeavoured  to  compress  the  principles 
that  are  to  be  the  foundations  of  your  future  work,  it 
is  my  last  duty  to  say  some  positive  words  as  to  the 
Di\'inity  of  all  art,  when  it  is  truly  fair,  or  truly  ser- 
viceable. 

125.  Every  seventh  day,  if  not  oftener,  the  greater 
number  of  well-meaning  persons  in  England  thankfully 
receive  from  their  teachei's  a  benediction,  couched  in 
these  terais :  — '  The  Grace  of  our  Lord  Christ,  and 
the  Love  of  God,  and  the  Fellowship  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  be  with  you.'  Now  I  do  not  know  precisely 
what  sense  is  attached  in  the  English  public  mind  to 
those  expressions.  But  what  I  have  to  tell  you  posi- 
tively is,  that  the   three   things   do  actually   exist,   and 


ART   TO    USE.  12^ 

can  be  known  if  you  care  to  know  them,  and  posseseeo 
if  you  care  to  possess  them ;  and  that  another  thin^ 
exists,  besides  these,  of  which  we  already  know  too 
much. 

First,  by  simply  obeying  the  orders  of  the  Fonndei 
of  your  religion,  all  grace,  graciousness,  or  beauty 
and  favour  of  gentle  life,  will  be  given  to  you  in 
mind  and  body,  in  work  and  in  rest.  The  Grace  of 
Christ  exists,  and  can  be  had  if  you  will.  Secondly,  as 
you  know  more  and  more  of  the  created  world,  you  \v\\] 
find  that  the  true  mil  of  its  Maker  is  that  its  creatures 
should  be  happy; — that  He  has  made  everything  beau- 
tiful in  its  time  and  its  place,  and  that  it  is  chiefly 
by  the  fault  of  men,  when  they  are  allowed  the  liberty 
of  thwarting  His  laws,  that  Creation  groans  or  travails 
in  pain.  The  Love  of  God  exists,  and  you  may  see  it, 
and  live  in  it  if  you  will.  Lastly,  a  Spirit  does  actually 
exist  which  teaches  the  ant  her  path,  the  bird  her 
building,  and  men,  in  an  instinctive  and  marvellous 
way,  whatever  lovely  arts  and  noble  deeds  are  possible 
to  them.  Without  it  you  can  do  no  good  thing.  To 
the  grief  of  it  you  can  do  many  bad  ones.  In  the 
[lossession  of  it  is  your  peace  and  your  power. 

And  there  is  a  fourth  thing,  of  which  we  already  know 
t<jo  much.  There  is  an  evil  spirit  whose  dominion  is  in 
blindness  and  in  cowardice,  as  the  dominion  of  the  Spirit 
of  wisdom  is  in  clear  sight  and  in  courage. 

And  this  blind  jiiid  cowardly  spirit  is  for  ever  telling 


126  THE    RELATION    OF    ART   TO    USE. 

yon  that  evil  things  are  pardonable,  and  you  shall  iioi 
die  for  them,  and  that  good  things  are  impossible,  and 
yon  need  not  live  for  them ;  and  that  gospel  of  his  ig 
now  the  loudest  that  is  preached  in  your  Saxon  tongue. 
Y  on  wiL  find  some  day,  to  your  cost,  if  you  believe  the 
first  part  of  it,  that  it  is  not  true ;  but  you  may  never 
if  you  believe  the  second  part  of  it,  find,  to  your  gain, 
that  also,  untrue ;  and  therefore  I  pray  you  with  all 
earnestness  to  prove,  and  know  within  your  hearts,  that 
all  things  lovely  and  i-ighteous  are  possible  for  those 
who  believe  in  their  possibility,  and  who  determine  that, 
for  their  part,  they  will  make  e^'ery  day's  work  con- 
tribute to  them.  Let  every  dawn  of  morning  be  to  you 
as  the  beginning  of  life,  and  eveiy  setting  sun  be  tc 
you  as  its  close : — then  let  every  one  of  these  short 
lives  leave  its  sure  record  of  some  kindly  thing  done 
for  others — some  goodly  strength  or  knowledge  gained 
for  yourselves ;  so,  from  day  to  day,  and  strength  tc 
strength,  you  shall  build  uj)  indeed,  by  Art,  by  Thought, 
and  by  Just  Will,  an  Ecclesia  of  England,  of  which  it 
sliall  not  be  said,  'See  what  manner  of  stones  aie  here/ 
but,  'See  what  manner  of  men.' 


IBectute  5 


LINK. 


^tdxm  S* 


126.  You  will,  I  doubt  not,  willingly  permit  me  to 
begin  your  lessons  in  veal  practice  of  art  in  words  of 
higher  authority  than  mine  (I  ouglit  rather*  to  say,  of 
all  authority,  while  mine  are  of  none), — the  words  of 
the  greatest  of  English  painters:  one  also,  than  whom 
there  is  indeed  no  greater,  among  those  of  any  nation, 
.or  any  time, — our  own  gentie  Reynolds. 

He  says  in  his  first  discourse: — 'The  Directors'  (of  the 
Academy) '  ought  more  particularly  to  watch  over  the  genius 
of  those  students,  who  being  more  advanced,  are  arrived  at 
that  critical  period  of  study,  on  the  nice  management  of 
which  their  future  turn  of  taste  depends.  At  that  age 
it  is  natural  for  them  to  be  more  captivated  with  what  is 
brilliant,  than  with  what  is  solid,  and  to  pi-efer  splendid 
negligence  to  painful  and  humiliating  exactness. 

'  A  facility  in  composing, — a  lively  and,  what  is  called, 

a  masterly  handling  of  the  chalk  or  pencil,  are,  it  must 

be  confessed,  captivating  qualities  to  young  minds,  and 

become  of  course  the  objects  of   their  ambition.     They 

Rudeavour   tt>  imitate  these  dazzling  excellences,  which 
6* 


130  LINE, 

they  will  find  no  great  labour  in  attaining.  xV.fter  iniicli: 
time  spent  in  these  frivolous  pursuits,  the  difficulty  wiU 
be  to  retreat;  but  it  will  then  be  too  late;  and  thert 
is  scarce  an  instan'ce  of  return  to  scrupulous  labour,  aftei 
the  mind  has  been  debauched  and  deceived  by  this  fal 
lacioue  mastery.' 

127.  I  read  you  these  words,  chiefly  that  Sir  Joshua, 
who  founded,  as  first  President,  the  Academical  schools 
of  English  painting,  in  these  well-known  discourses, 
may  also  begin,  as  he  has  truest  right  to  do,  our  system 
of  instruction  in  this  University.  But  secondly,  I  read 
them  that  I  may  press  on  your  attention  these  singular 
words,  '  painful  and  humiliating  exactness.'  Singular,  as 
expressing  the  first  conditions  of  the  study  required  from 
his  pupils  by  the  master,  who,  of  all  men  except  Yelas^ 
quez,  seems  to  have  painted  with  the  gi-eatest  ease.  It 
is  true  that  he  asks  this  pain,  this  humiliation,  only 
from  youths  who  intend  to  follow  the  .  profession  of 
artists.  But  if  you  wish  yourselves  to  know  anything 
of  the  practice  of  art,  you  must  not  suppose  that  because 
your  study  will  be  more  desultory  'than  that  of  Academy 
students,  it  may  therefore  be  less  accurate.  The  shorter 
the  time  you  have  to  give,  the  more  careful  you  should 
be  to  spend  it  profitably ;  and  I  would  not  wish  you  tc 
devote  one  hour  to  the  practice  of  drawing,  un'ess  you 
are  resolved  to  be  informed  in  it  of  all  that  in  an  houi 
ca:i  be  taught. 

128.  I  speak  of  the  jjractice  of  drawing  only ;  though 


LINB.  131 

elementary  study  of  modelling  may  perhaps  son  a  daj 
be  advisably  connected  with  it ;  but  I  do  not  wii^h  t( 
disturb  or  amuse  you  with  a  formal  statement  of  the 
manifold  expectations  I  have  formed  respecting  your  future 
wurK.  You  will  not,  I  am  sure,  imagine  that  I  have 
begun  without  a  plan,  nor  blame  my  reticence  as  to  the 
parts  of  it  which  cannot  yet  he  put  into  execution,  ano 
which  there  may  occur  reason  aftei'wards  to  modify 
My  first  task  must  unquestionably  be  to  lay  before  yor 
light  and  simple  methods  of  drawing  and  colouring. 

I  use  the  word  '  colouring '  without  ref eieiice  to  any 
particular  vehicle  of  colour,  fur  the  laws  of  good  paint- 
ing are  the  same,  whatever  liquid  is  employed  to  dissolve 
the  pigments.  But  the  technical  management  of  oil  is 
more  difficult  than  that  of  water-colour,  and  the  impos- 
sibility of  using  it  with  safety  among  books  or  prints, 
and  its  unavailableness  for  note-book  sketches  and  memo- 
randa, are  sufficient  reasons  for  not  introducing  it  in  a 
course  of  practice  intended  chiefly  for  students  of  litera- 
ture. On  the  contrary,  in  the  exercises  of  artists,  oil 
should  be  the  \ehicle  of  c(jlour  employed  from  the  first. 
The  extended  practice  of  water-colour  painting,  as  a 
separate  skill,  is  in  every  way  harmful  to  the  arts  :  its 
pleasant  slightness  and  plausible  dexterity  divert  the 
genius  of  the  painter  from  its  proper  aims,  and  with- 
draw the  attention  of  the  public  from  excellence  of  higliei 
claim  ;  nor  ought  any  man,  who  has  the  consciousnesB  ol 
abiUty  for  good  work,  to  be  ignorant  oi,  or  indolent  iu 


132  LINE. 

employing,  the  methods  of  making  its  results  pennanent  as 
long  as  the  laws  of  Nature  allow.  It  is  surely  a  severe 
lesson  to  us  in  this  matter,  that  the  best  works  of  Turner 
could  not  be  shown  to  the  public  for  six  months  without 
being  destroyed, — and  that  his  most  ambitious  ones  for 
the  most  part  perished,  even  before  they  could  be  shown . 
I  will  break  through  my  law  of  reticence,  however,  so 
far  as  to  tell  you  that  I  have  hope  of  one  day  in- 
teresting you  greatly  (with  the  help  of  the  Florentine 
masters),  in  the  study  of  the  arts  of  moulding  and 
painting  porcelain ;  and  to  induce  some  of  you  to  use 
your  future  power  of  patronage  in  encouraging  the 
various  branches  of  this  art,  and  turning  the  attention 
of  the  workmen  of  Italy  from  the  vulgar  tricks  of 
minute  and  perishable  mosaic  to  the  exquisite  sub- 
tilties  of  fonn  and  colour  possible  in  the  perfectly  ductile, 
afterwards  unalterable  clay.  And  one  of  the  ultimate 
results  of  such  craftsmanship  might  be  the  production 
of  pictures  as  brilliant  as  painted  glass, — as  delicate  as 
the  most  subtle  water-colours,  and  more  permanent 
than  the  Pyramids, 

129.  And  now  to  begin  our  own  work.  In  order  that 
we  may  know  how  rightly  to  learn  to  draw,  and  to  paint, 
it  will  be  necessary,  will  it  not,  that  we  know  first  wha! 
we  are  to  aim  at  doing; — what  kind  of  representatioc 
of  nature  is  best  ? 

I  will  tell  you  in  the  words  of  Lionardo.  '  That 
Ifi  the  most  praiseworthy  painting  which   has  most  con 


LINE. 


I<i3 


fv)rmity  with  the  thing  represented,'  '  quella  pittura  e  pin 
laudabile,  la  quale  ha  piu  conformita  con  la  cosa  iini- 
tata,'  (chap.  276).  In  plain  terms,  '  the  painting  which  is 
likest  nature  is  the  best.'  And  you  will  find  by  referring 
to  the  preceding  chapter,  '  come  lo  specchio  e  maestro 
de'  pittori,'  how  absolutely  Lionardo  means  what  he  says. 
Let  the  living  thing,  (lie  tells  us,)  be  reflected  in  a 
mirror,  then  put  your  picture  beside  the  reflection,  and 
match  the  one  with  the  other.  And  indeed,  the  very 
best  painting  is  unquestionably  so  like  the  mirrored 
truth,  that  all  the  world  admit  its  excellence.  Entirely 
first-rate  w^ork  is  so  quiet  and  natural  that  there  can 
be  no  dispute  over  it;  you  may  not  particularly  ad- 
inir^  it,  but  you  will  find  no  fault  with  it.  Second- 
rate  painting  pleases  one  person  much,  and  displeases 
another;  but  first-rate  painting  pleases  all  a  little,  and 
intensely  pleases  those  w^io  can  recognise  its  unostenta- 
tious skill. 

130.  This,  then,  is  what  we  have  first  got  to  do — to 
make  our  drawdng  look  as  like  the  thing  we  have  to 
draw  as  we  can. 

Now,  all  objects  are  seen  by  the  eye  as  patches  of 
colour  of  a  certain  shape,  with  gradations  of  colour  witliin 
them.  And,  unless  their  colours  be  actually  luminous, 
as  those  of  the  sun,  or  of  fire,  these  patches  of  different 
hues  are  sufliciently  imitable,  except  so  far  as  they  are 
Been  stereoscopically.  You  will  find  Lionardo  again  and 
again  insistiug  on  the  stereoscopic  pow^er  of  the  dduble 


134 


LINE. 


sight :  but  do  not  let  that  trouble  you  ;   you  can   onlj 
paint   what  you  can   see   from  one  point   of   sight,   but 
that  is  quite  enough.     So  seen,  then,  all  objects  appeal 
to  the  human  eye  simply  as  masses  of  colour  of  variable 
drpth,  texture,  and  outline/    The  outline  of   any  object 
iS  the   limit  of    its   mass,   as    relieved   against   another 
mass.      Take   a   crocus,   and   put   it   on   a  green   cloth. 
You  will  see  it  detach  itself  as  a  mere  space  of  yellow 
•from   the  green   behind   it,  as   it  does   from  the  grass. 
Hold  it  up  against  the  window — you  will  see  it  detach 
itself  as  a  dark  space  against  the  white  or  blue  behind 
it.     In  either  case  its  outline  is  the  limit  of  the  space 
of  colour   by   which  it   expresses   itself  to  your    sight. 
That   outline   is   therefore  infinitely   subtle — not  even  a 
line,  but  the  place  of  a  line,  and  that,  also,  made  soft  by 
texture.     In  the  finest  painting,  it  is  therefore  slightly 
softened;  but  it  is  necessary  to  be  able  to  draw  it  with 
al)solute  sharpness  and  precision.     The  art  of  doing  this 
is  to  be  obtained  by  drawing  it  as  ah  actual  line,  which 
art  is  to  be  the  subject  of  our  present  enquiry ;  but  I 
must  first  lay  the   divisions  of  the  entire   subject  com- 
pletely before  you. 

131.  I  have  said  that  all  objects  detach  themselves 
as  masses  of  colour.  Usually,  light  and  shade  are  thought 
of  as  separate  from  colour  ;  but  the  fact  is  that  all  nature 
is  seen  as  a  mosaic  composed  of  graduated  portions  of 
different  colours,  dark  or  light.  There  is  no  difference 
ill    the   qualify  of  these   colours,  except  as  affected   h^ 


LIJNiL.  138 

texture.  You  will  constantly  hear  lights  and  shades 
spoken  of  as  if  these  were  different  in  nature,  and  to 
he  painted  in  different  ways.  But  every  light  is  a 
shadow  compared  to  higher  lights,  till  we  reach  the 
brightness  x)f  the  sun ;  and  every  shadow  is  a  light 
compared  to  lower  shadows,  till  we  reach  the  darkness 
of  night. 

Every  colour  used  in  painting,  except  pure  white  and 
black,  is  therefore  a  light  and  shade  at  the  same  time. 
It  is  a  light  with  reference  to  all  below  it,  and  a  shade 
with  reference  to  all  above  it. 

132.  Tbe  solid  forms  of  an  object,  that  is  to  say,  the 
projections  or  recessions  of  its  surface  within  the  outline, 
are,  for  the  most  part,  rendered  visible  by  variations  in 
the  intensity  or  quantity  of  light  falling  on  them.  The 
study  of  the  relations  between  the  quantities  of  this  light, 
irrespectively  of  its  colour,  is  the  second  division  of  the 
regulated  science  of  painting. 

133.  Finally,  the  qualities  and  relations  of  natura'. 
colours,  tlie  means  of  imitating  them,  and  the  laws  by 
which  they  become  separately  beautiful,  and  in  associatioi. 
hai-monious,  are  the  subjects  of  the  third  and  final 
division  of  the  painter's  study.  I  shall  endeavour  at  once 
to  state  to  you  what  is  most  immediately  desirable  for 
you  to  know  on  each  of  these  subjects,  in  this  and  the 
two  following  lectures. 

134.  Wliat  we  ha\e  to  do,  theu,  from  beginning  tc 
end,  is,  I  repeat  once  more,  Biiu})ly  to  draw  spaces  of  tlieii 


136  LINE. 

true  shape,  and  to  fill  them  with  coloui-s  which  sJial 
match  their  colours;  quite  a  simple  thing  in  the  defi 
iiition  of  it,  not  quite  so  easy  in  the  doing  of  it. 

But  it  is  something  to  get  this  simple  definition ; 
and  I  wish  you  to  notice  that  the  terms  of  it  are  com- 
l)lete,  though  I  do  not  introduce  the  terms  '  light '  or 
'  shadow.'  Painters  who  have  no  eye  for  colour  have 
greatly  confused  and  falsified  the  practice  of  art  by  the 
tlieory  that  shadow  is  an  absence  of  colour.  Shadow  is, 
on  the  contrary,  necessary  to  the  full  presence  of  colour ; 
for  every  colour  is  a  diminished  quantity  or  energy  of 
light;  and,  practically,  it  follows,  from  what  I  have  just 
told  you  (that  every  light  in  painting  is  a  shadow  to 
liigher  lights,  and  every  shadow  a  light  to  lower  shadows) 
that  also  every  colour  in  painting  must  be  a  shadow  to 
some  brighter  colour,  and  a  light  to  some  darker  one— all 
the  while  being  a  positive  colour  itself.  And  the  great 
splendour  of  the  Venetian  school  arises  from  their  ha\dng 
seen  and  held  from  the  beginning  this  great  fact— that 
shadow  is  as  much  colour  as  light,  often  much  more. 
In  Titian's  fullest  red  the  lights  are  pale  rose-colour, 
passing  into  white — the  shadows  warm  deep  crimson.  In 
Vej'onese's  most  splendid  orange,  the  lights  are  pale,  the 
shadows  crocus  colour ;  and  so  on.  In  nature,  dark  sides, 
if  seen  by  reflected  lights,  are  almost  always  f.iUer  or 
warmer  in  colour  than  the  lights ;  and  the  practice  oi 
the  Bolognese  and  Koman  schools,  in  drawing  theii 
Rhado^rs  always  dark  and  cold,  is  false  from  the  begin 


LINE.  137 

nmg,  and  renders  perfect  painting  for  ever  impossil)]e  in 
those  schools,  and  all  that  follow  them. 

135.  Every  visible  space,  then,  be  it  dark  or  light,  is  a 
space  of  colour  of  some  kind,  or  of  black  or  white.  And 
you  have  to  enclose  it  with  a  true  outline,  and  to  paint 
it  ^vith  its  true  colour. 

But  before  considering  how  we  are  to  draw  this  en- 
closing line,  I  must  state  to  you  something  about  lines 
in  general,  and  their  use  by  different  schools.  I  said  just 
now  that  there  was  no  difiPerence  between  the  masses  of 
colour  of  which  all  visible  nature  is  composed,  except  in 
ti^ture. 

1.  Textures  are  principally  of  three  kinds  : — 

(1)  Lustrous,  as  of  water  and  glass. 

(2)  Bloomy,  or  velvety,  as  of  a  rose-leaf  or  peach. 

(3)  Linear,  produced  by  filaments  or  threads,  as  in 

feathers,  fur,  hair,  and  woven  or  reticulated 

tissues. 
All  the  three  sources  of  pleasure  to  the  eye  in  texture 
are  united  in  the  best  t)rnamental  work.  A  fine  picture 
by  Fra  Angelico,  or  a  fine  illuminated  page  of  missal, 
has  large  spaces  of  gold,  partly  burnished  and  lustrous, 
partly  dead ; — some  of  it  chased  and  enriched  with  linear 
texture,  and  mingled  with  imposed  or  inlaid  colours,  soft  in 
bloom  like  that  of  the  rose-leaf.  But  many  schools  of  art 
depend  for  the  most  part  on  one  kind  of  texture  only, 
and  a  vast  quantity  of  the  art  of  all  ages  rests  for  great 
part  of  its  power  e.-pecially  oj^  textnre  produced  by  muL 


138  LINE. 

^ 

titudinous  lines.  Thus,  wood  engraving,  line  engraving 
properly  so  called,  and  countless  varieties  of  sculpture^ 
metal  work,  and  textile  fabric,  depend  for  great  part  of 
the  effect  of  their  colors,  or  shades,  for  their  mystery, 
softness,  and  clearness,  on  modification  of  the  surfaces 
by  lines  or  threads ;  and  even  in  advanced  oil  painting, 
the  work  often  depends  for  some  pairt  of  its  effect  on 
the  texture  of  the  canvas, 

136.  Again,  the  arts  of  etching  and  mezzotint  engrav 
ing  depend  principally  for  their  effect  on  the  velvety,  or 
bloomy  texture  of  their  darkness,  and  the  best  of  all 
painting  is  the  fresco  work  of  great  colourists,  in  which 
the  colours  are  What  is  usually  called  dead;  but  they 
are  anything  but  dead,  they  glow  with  tire  lumin(jus 
bloom  of  life.  The  frescoes  of  Correggio,  when  not  re- 
[)ainted,  are  supreme  in  this  quality ;  and  you  have  a 
lovely  example  in  the  University  Galleries,  in  the  un- 
touched portion  of  the  female  head  by  Raphael,  partly 
restored  by  Lawrence. 

137.  While,  however,  in  all  periods  of  art  these  differ- 
ent textures  are  thus  used  in  various  styles,  and  for  various 
purposes,  you  will  find  that  there  is  a  broad  historical 
division  of  schools,  which  will  materially  assist  you  in 
understanding  them.  The  earliest  art  in  most  countries 
IB  linear,  consisting  of  interwoven,  or  richly  spiral  and 
otherwise  involved  arrangements  of  sculptured  or  painted 
lines,  on  stone,  wood,  metal,  or  clay.  It  is  generally 
characteristic  of  savage  life,  and  of  feverish  energy  ol 


LINE.  13S 

imaffination.  1  shall  examine  these  scliools  Avith  yon 
liereafter.  under  the  general  head  of  the  '  Schools  oi 
Line.' 

Secondly,  even  in  the  earliest  periods,  among- 4)ower- 
ful  nations,  this  linear  decoration  is  more  or  lese 
filled  with  chequered  or  barred  shade,  and  begins  at 
once  to  repr'^sent  animal  or  floral  form,  first  in  mere 
outline,  and  then  by  outlines  filled  with  flat  shado^y,  or 
with  flat  colour.  And  here  we  instantly  find  two  great 
divisions  of  temper  and  thought.  The  Greeks  look  upon 
all  colour  first  as  light ;  they  ai-e,  as  compared  with  other 
races,  insensitive  to  hue,  exquisitely  ^sensitive  to  phe- 
nomena of  light.  And  their  linear  school  passes  into 
one  of  flat  masses  of  light  and  darkness,  represented  in 
the  main  by  four  tints, — white,  black,  and  two  reds,  one 
l)rick  colour,  more  or  less  vivid,  the  other  dark  jnirple ; 
these  two  representing  their  favourite  Trop^p-jpeoi  colour, 
in  its  light  and  dark  powei*s.  On  the  other  hand,  many 
of  the  Northern  nations  are  at  first  entirely  insensible 
to  light  and  shade,  but  exquisitely  sensitive  to  colour,  and 
their  linear  decoration  is  filled  with  flat  tints,  infinitely 
s"aried,  having  no  expression  of  light  and  shade.  Lot!) 
these  schools  have  a  limited  but  absolute  perfecti(jn  ol 
their  own,  and  their  peculiar  successes  can  in  no  wise 
be  imitated,  except  by  the  strictest  observance  of  the 
Bame  limitations. 

138.     You  have  then,  Line  for  the  earliest  art,  bran(;h 
ing  into — 

# 


1 40  LINE. 

(1)  Greek,  Line  with  Light. 

(2)  Gothic,  Line  with  Colour. 

Now,  as  art  completes  itself,  each  of  these  schocls  retail 
their  separate  characters,  but  they  cease  to  depend  on 
lines,  and  leam  to  represent  masses  instead,  becoming 
more  refined  at  the  same  time  in  all  modes  of  percep- 
tion and  execution. 

And  thus  there  arise  the  two  vast  mediaeval  schools ; 
one  of  flat  and  infinitely  varied  colour,  with  exquisite 
character  and  sentiment  added,  in  the  forms  represented; 
but  little  perception  of  shadow.  The  other,  of  light  and 
shade,  with  exquisite  drawing  of  solid  form,  and  little 
perception  of  colour :  sometimes  as  little  of  sentiment. 
Of  these,  the  school  of  flat  colour  is  the  more  vital  one ; 
it  is  always  natural  and  simple,  if  not  great ; — and  when 
it  is  great,  it  is  very  great. 

The  school  of  light  and  shade  associates  itself  with 
that  of  engraving ;  it  is  essentially  an  academical  school ; 
broadly  diNdding  light  from  darkness,  and  begins  by 
assuming  that  the  light  side  of  all  objects  shall  be  re- 
presented by  white,  and  the  extreme  shadow  by  black. 
On  this  conventional  principle  it  reaches  a  limited  ex- 
cellence of  its  own,  in  which  the  best  existing  types 
of  engraving  are  executed,  and  ultimately,  the  most 
regular  expressions  of  organic  form  in  painting. 

Then,  lastly, — the  schools  of  colour  advance  steadily 
till  they  adopt  from  those  of  light  and  shade,  whatevei 
is    compatible    with    their    own    power, — and  then    yo« 


LIKE.  141 

hsLxe  perfect  art,  represented  centrally  by  that  of  tlie 
great  Venetians. 

The  schools  of  light  and  shade,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  partly,  in  their  academical  formulas,  toe  'laiighty, 
and  partly,  in  their  narrowness  of  imagination,  too  weak, 
to  learn  much  fi'om  the  schools  of  colour;  and  they  pass 
into  a  decadence,  consisting  partly  in  proud  endeavours 
to  give  painting  the  qualities  of  sculpture,  and  partly 
in  the  pursuit  of  effects  of  light  and  shade,  carried  at 
last  to  extreme  sensational  subtlety  by  the  Dutch  school. 
In  their  fall,  they  drag  the  schools  of  colour  down  witli 
them ;  and  the  recent  history  of  art  is  one  of  confused 
effort  to  find  lost  roads,  and  resume  allegiance  to  violated 
principles. 

139.  That,  briefly,  is  the  map  of  the  great  schools, 
easily  remembered  by  this  form  : — 

Line. 

Early  schools. 
Link  and  Light.  Line  and  Coloub. 

Greek  clay.  Gothic  glass. 

Mass  and  Light.  Mass  and  Coi-ouk. 

(Represented  by  Lionardo,  (Represented  by  Giorgione, 

and  his  schools. )  and  his  schools. ) 

Mass,  Light,  and  Ooloub. 

(Represented  by  Titian, 

and  his  schools. ) 

(  will   endeavour  hereafter  to  sliow   you   the   varioni 


142  LINE. 

relations  uf  all  these  branches;  at  present,  I  am  only 
concerned  with  your  own  practice.  My  wish  is  that 
yon  should  with  your  own  eyes  and  fingers  trace,  and 
in  your  own  progress  follow,  the  method  of  advance 
traced  for  you  by  these  great  schools.  I  wish  you  t<i 
begin  by  getting  command  of  line,  that  is  to  say,  b} 
learning  to  draw  a  steady  line,  limiting  with  absolute  cor- 
rectness the  form  or  space  you  intend  it  to  limit ;  to  pro- 
ceed by  getting  command  over  flat  tints,  so  that  you 
may  be  able  to  fill  the  spaces  you  have  enclosed,  evenly, 
either  -with  shade  or  colour ;  according  to  the  school  you 
adopt;  and  finally  to  obtain  the  power  of  adding  such 
fineness  of  drawing  within  the  masses,  as  shall  express 
their  undulation,  and  their  characters  of  form  and 
texture. 

140.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  methods  of  ex- 
isting schools  must  be  aware  that  I  thus  nearly  invert  their 
practice  of  teaching.  Students  at  present  learn  to  draw 
details  first,  and  to  colour  and  mass  them  afterwards. 
I  shall  endeavour  to  teach  you  to  arrange  broad  masses 
and  colours  first ;  and  you  shall  put  the  details  into  them 
afterwards.  I  have  several  reasons  for  this  audacity,  of 
which  you  may  justly  require  me  to  state  the  principal 
ones.  The  first  is  that,  as  I  have  shown  you,  this 
method  I  wish  you  to  follow,  is  the  natural  one.  All 
great  artist  nations  Jmve  actually  learned  to  work  in  this 
way,  and  I  believe  it  therefore  the  right,  as  the  hitherti 
successful  one.     Secondly,  you  will  find  it  less  irks'im^ 


LINE.  143 

than  the  revei-se  method,  and  more  dcfii  ite.  Wlien  a  l)e- 
ginner  is  set  at  once  to  draw  details,  and  make  finished 
studies  in  Hght  and  shade,  no  master  can  correct  hia 
innumerable  errors,  or  rescue  liim  out  of  his  endless 
difficulties.  But  in  the  natural  method,  he  can  correct, 
if  he  will,  his  own  errors.  You  will  have  positive  linea 
to  draw,  presenting  no  more  difficulty,  except  in  requiring 
greater  steadiness  of  hand,  than  the  outlines  of  a  map. 
They  will  be  generally  SAveepiug  and  sim])le,  instead  of 
being  jagged  into  promontories  and  bays;  but  assuredly, 
they  may  be  drawn  i-ightly  (with  patience),  and  tlieii 
rightness  tested  with  matheuuxtical  accuracy.  You  have 
only  to  follow  your  o^vn  line  with  tracing  paper,  and 
apply  it  to  your  copy.  If  they  do  not  correspond,  you 
are  wrong,  and  you  need  no  uiastei-  to  show  you  where. 
Again;  in  washing  in  a  flat  tone  of  colour  or  shade,  you 
can  always  see  yourself  if  it*  is  flat,  and  kept  well  within 
the  edges;  and  you  can  sot  a  ])ioce  of  your  colour  side 
by  side  with  that  of  the  co])y;  if  it  does  not  match,  you 
are  wrong;  and,  again,  you  need  no  one  to  tell  you  so, 
if  your  eye  for  colour  is  true.  It  happens,  indeed,  more 
frequently  than  would  be  supposed,  that  there  is  real  want 
of  power  in  the  eye  to  distinguish  colours;  and  this  1 
even  suspect  to  be  a  conditioii  which  has  been  sometimes 
attendant  on  high  degrees  of  cerebral  sensitiveness  in  other 
directions:  but  sucli  want  of  faculty  would  be  detected  ic 
your  fii'st  two  or  three  exercises  by  this  simple  method, 
win'le,  otherwise  you  might  go  on  for  years  endeavouring 


144  LINE. 

to  colour  from  nature  in  vain.  Lastly,  and  this  is  a  vorj 
weighty  collateral  reason,  such  a  method  enables  me  to 
show  you  many  things,  besides  the  art  of  drawing.  Every 
exercise  that  I  prepare  for  you  will  be  either  a  portion  oi 
some  important  example  of  ancient  art,  or  of  some  natural 
f»bject.  However  rudely  or  unsuccessfully  you  may  draw 
it  (though  I  anticipate  from  you  neither  want  of  care  noi 
success),  you  will  nevertheless  have  learned  what  no  words 
could  have  as  forcibly  or  completely  taught  you,  eithei' 
respecting  early  art  or  organic  structure;  and  I  am  thus 
certain  that  not  a  moment  you  spend  attentively  will  be 
altogether  wasted,  and  that,  generally,  you  will  be  twice 
gainers  by  every  effort.  There  is,  however,  yet  another 
point  in  which  I  think  a  change  of  existing  methods  will 
be  advisable. 

141.  You  have  here  in  Oxford  one  of  the  finest  col 
lections  in  Europe  of  drawings  in  pen,  and  chalk,  by 
Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael.  Of  the  whole  number, 
you  cannot  but  have  noticed  that  not  one  is  weak  or 
studentlike — all  are  evidently  master's  work. 

You  may  look  the  galleries  of  Europe  through,  and  so 
far  as  I  know,  or  as  it  is  possible  to  make  with  safety  any 
BO  wide  generalization,  you  will  not  find  in  them  a  childisli 
or  feeble  drawing,  by  these,  or  by  any  other  great  master. 

And  f arthei" : — by  the  greatest  men — by  Titian,  Velas- 
quez, or  Veronese — you  will  hardly  find  an  authentic 
drawing  at  all.  For  the  fact  is,  that  while  we  moderniE 
ha\"e  always  learned,  or  tried  to  learn,  to  paint  by  drawing, 


LINE.  145 

the  ancients  learned  to  draw  by  painting — or  by  engrav 
lug,  more  difficult  still.  The  brush  was  put  into  theii 
hands  when  they  were  children,  and  they  were  forced 
to  draw  vnth.  that,  until,  if  they  used  the  pen  or 
crayon,  they  used  it  either  with  the  lightness  of  a  bi-ush 
(tr  the  decision  of  a  graver.  Michael  Angelo  uses  his 
pen  like  a  chisel;  but  all  of  them  seem  to  use  it  only 
when  they  are  in  the  height  of  their  power,  and  then  foi 
rapid  notation  of  thought  or  for  study  of  models;  but 
iie\ei-  as  a  practice  helping  them  to  paint.  Probably  ex- 
orrtises  of  the  severest  kind  were  gone  through  in  minute 
drawing  by  the  apprentices  of  the  goldsmiths,  of  which  we 
hear  and  know  little,  and  which  were  entirely  a  matter  of 
course.  To  these,  and  to  the  exquisiteness  of  care  and 
touch  developed  in  working  precious  metals,  may  probably 
be  attributed  the  final  triumph  of  Italian  sculpture.  Mi- 
chael Angelo,  when  a  boy,  is  said  to  have  copied  engravings 
by  Schongauer  and  others  with  his  pen,  in  facsimile  sc 
true  that  he  could  pass  his  drawings  as  the  originals.  But 
1  should  only  discourage  you  from  all  farther  attempts 
in  art,  if  I  asked  you  to  imitate  any  of  these  accomplished 
drawings  of  the  gem-artificers.  You  have,  fortunately, 
a  most  interesting  collection  of  them  already  in 
your  galleries,  and  may  try  your  hands  on  them  if  you 
will.  But  I  desire  rather  that  you  should  attempt 
notliing  except  what  can  by  determiifation  be  absolutely 
accomplished,  and  be  known  and  felt  by  you  to  he 
accomplislied    when    it    is    so.     Now,    thei-efore,   I    fuv 


1^40  LINE, 

going  at  once  to  comply  witli  that  populai  inBtiatJl 
which,  I  hope,  so  far  as  you  care  for  di-awing  at  all 
yon  are  still  boys  enough  to  feel,  the  desii-e  to  paint. 
Paint  you  shall ;  but  remember,  I  understand  by  painting 
what  you  will  not  find  easy.  Paint  you  shall  ;  but  daub 
or  blot  you  shall  not:  and  there  \vill  he  even  more  care 
]-oquired,  though  care  of  a  pleasanter  kind,  to  f(_)llow  tht< 
lines  traced  for  you  with  the  point  of  the  brush  than  if 
they  had  been  drawn  ^^dth  that  of  a  ci-ayon.  But  from 
the  very  beginning  (though  carrying  on  at  the  same 
time  an  incidental  practice  with  crayon  and  lead  pencil), 
you  shall  try  to  draw  a  line  of  absolute  correctness  with 
the  point,  not  of  pen  or  crayon,  but  of  the  brush, 
as  Apelles  did,  and  as  all  coloured  lines  are  drawn 
on  Greek  vases.  A  line  of  absolute  correctness,  observe. 
r  do  not  care  how  slowly  you  do  it,  or  with  how  many 
alteiationSj  junctions,  or  retouchings;  the  one  thing  I  ask 
of  you  is,  that  the  line  shall  be  right,  and  right  by  meas- 
urement, to  the  same  minuteness  which  you  would  have 
to  give  in  a  Government  chart  to  the  map  of  a  dangerous 
shoal. 

142,  This  question  of  measurement  is,  as  you  are 
probably  aware,  one  much  vexed  in  art  schools ;  but  it 
is  determined  indisputably  by  tiie  very  first  words  writ- 
ten by  Lionardo :  '  II  giovane  deve  prima  impararo 
prospettiva,  per  le  misure  d'  ogni  cosa.' 

Without  absolute  precision  of  measurement,  it  is  cer 
tamly  impossible  for  you  to  learn  perspective  rightly  j  and_ 


LINE.  147 

as  far  as  1  can  judge,  impossible  to  learn  anything  else 
rightly.  And  in  my  past  experience  of  teaching,  I  have 
found  that  such  precision  is  of  all  tilings  the  most  difficult 
to  enforce  on  the  pupils.  It  is  easy  to  persuade  to  dili 
gence,  or  provoke  to  enthusiasm;  but  I  have  found  it 
hitherto  impossible  to  humiliate  one  student  into  perfect 
accuracy. 

It  is,  therefore,  necessary,  in  beginning  a  system  of 
drawing  for  the  University,  that  no  opening  should  be 
left  for  failure  in  this  essential  matter.  I  hope  you  will 
trust  the  words  of  the  most  accomplished  draughtsman 
of  Italy,  and  the  painter  of  the  great  i  acred  picture 
which,  perhaps  beyond  all  others,  has  intlitenced  the  mind 
of  Em'ope,  when  he  tells  you  that  your  first  duty  is  'to 
learn  pei-spective  by  the  measures  of  everything.'  For 
perspective,  I  will  undertake  that  it  shall  be  made,  prac- 
tically, quite  easy  to  you ;  but  I  wish  first  to  make  ap- 
plication to  the  Trustees  of  the  National  Gallery  for  the 
loan  to  Oxford  of  Turner's  perspective  diagrams,  which 
are  at  present  lying  iiseless  in  a  folio  in  the  National 
(lallery ;  and  therefore  we  will  not  trouble  ourselves 
about  perspective  till  the  autunni;  unless,  in  the  mean- 
while, you  care  t.>  master  the  mathematical  theory  of  it, 
which  I  have  cai'ried  as  far  as  is  lu'cessary  for  you  in  my 
treatise  written  in  1859,  of  which  copies  shall  be  placed 
at  your  disposal  in  your  working  room.  But  the  habit 
and  dexterity  of  measurement  you  nnist  acquire  at  once, 
ftiid   tliat  with   engineer's  accuracy.     1   hope  thai    in  oiii 


148  Lm:B. 

now  gradually  developing  system  of  education,  elc^meutai^ 
architectural  or  military  drawing  will  be  required  at  all 
public  schools  ;  so  that  when  youths  come  to  the  Uni 
versity,  it  may  be  no  more  necessary  for  them  to  pass 
through  the  preliminary  exercises  of  drawing  than  of 
grammar:  for  the  present,  I  will  place  in  your  series 
examples  simple  and  severe  enough  for  all  necessary 
practice. 

143.  And  while  you  are  learning  to  measure,  and 
to  draw,  and  lay  flat  tints,  with  the  brush,  you  must 
also  get  easy  command  of  the  pen;  for  that  is  not  only 
the  great  instrument  for  the  finest  sketching,  but  its 
right  use  is  the  foundation  of  the  art  of  illumination. 
In  nothing  is  fine  art  more  directly  connected  with 
service  than  in  the  close  dependence  of  decorative  illumi- 
nation on  good  writing.  Perfect  illumination  is  only 
writing  made  lovely ;  the  moment  it  passes  into  picture- 
maldng  it  has  lost  its  dignity  and  function.  For  pictures, 
small  or  great,  if  beautiful,  ought  not  to  be  painted  on 
leaves  of  books,  to  be  worn  with  service  ;  and  pictures,  small 
or  great,  not  beautiful,  should  be  painted  nowhere.  But 
to  make  writing  itself  beautiful, — to  make  the  sweep  of 
the  pen  lovely, — is  the  true  art  of  illumination;  and  I 
particularly  wish  you  to  note  this,  because  it  happens 
continually  that  young  girls  who  are  incapable  of  tracing 
a  single  curve  with  steadiness,  much  more  of  delineating 
any  ornamental  or  organic  form  with  correctness,  think 
that  the   work  which  would  be   intoleral)le  in  ordinar) 


LINE.  14S 

drawing  becomes  tolerable  when  it  is  employed  for  the 
decoration  of  texts;  and  thus  they  render  all  healthy 
progress  impossible,  by  protecting  themselves  in  inefh 
ciency  nnder  the  shield  of  a  good  moti\e.  "Whereas  the 
right  way  of  setting  to  work  is  to  make  themselves  first 
mistresses  of  the  art  of  writing  beautifully;  and  then  t( 
apply  that  art  in  its  propei-  degrees  of  development  t( 
whatever  they  desire  permanently  to  write.  And  it  if? 
indeed  a  much  more  truly  religious  duty  for  girls  to 
acquire  a  habit  of  deliberate,  legible,  and  lovely  penman 
ship  in  their  daily  use  of  the  pen,  than  to  illuminate  any 
quantity  of  texts.  IIa\  ing  done  so,  they  may  next  disci- 
pline their  hands  into  the  control  of  lines  of  any  length, 
and,  finally,  add  the  beauty  of  colour  and  form  to  the 
Howing  of  these  perfect  lines.  But  it  is  only  after  years 
of  practice  that  they  will  be  al)le  to  illuminate  noble 
words  rightly  for  the  eyes,  as  it  is  only  after  years  of 
practice  that  they  can  make  them  melodious  rightly, 
with  the  voice. 

144.  I  shall  not  attempt,  in  this  lecture,  to  give  yoT 
any  account  of  the  use  of  the  pen  as  a  drawing  instrumeii 
That  use  is  connected  in  many  ways  with  principles  both 
of  shading  and  of  engraving,  hereafter  to  be  examined  at 
length.  I>\it  I  may  generally  state  to  you  that  its  best 
employment  is  in  giving  determination  to  the  forms  in 
drawings  washed  with  neutral  tint;  and  that,  in  this  use 
of  it,  TIoll»ein  is  quite  without  a  rival.  1  have  thei'efore 
|)lacod  many  examples  of  hij-  work  among  your  copies.     If 


1 50  LINE. 

is  em  ployed  for  rapid  study  by  Raphael  and  other  master« 
of  delineation,  who,  in  such  cases,  give  with  it  also 
partial  indications  of  shadow ;  but  it  is  not  a  proper 
instrument  for  shading,  when  dl•a^vings  are  intended  to 
be  deliberate  and  complete,  nor  do  the  great  masters  ever 
so  employ  it.  Its  nrtue  is  the  power  of  prc)ducing  a 
[)erfectly  delicate,  equal,  and  decisive  line  with  great 
rapidity;  and  the  temptation  allied  witli  that  vii-tue  is 
to  licentious  haste,  and  chance-swept  instead  of  strictly- 
commanded  curvature.  In  the  liands  of  very  great 
painters  it  obtains,  like  the  etching  needle,  qualities  of 
exquisite  charm  in  this  free  use ;  luit  all  attempts  at 
imitation  of  these  confused  and  suggestive  sketches  must 
be  absolutely  denied  to  yourselves  while  students.  You 
may  fancy  you  have  produced  something  like  them  with 
little  trouble ;  but,  be  assured,  it  is  in  reality  as  unlike 
them  as  nonsense  is  uidike  sense ;  and  that,  if  you  persist 
in  such  work,  you  will  not  only  prevent  your  own  exe- 
cutive progress,  but  you  will  nevei-  understand  in  all  your 
\ive&  what  good  painting  means.  Whenever  you  take  a 
pen  in  your  hand,  if  you  cannot  count  every  line  you  lay 
with  it,  and  say  why  you  make  it  so  long  and  no  longer, 
and  why  you  drew  it  in  that  direction  and  no  other,  your 
worn  IS  bad.  The  only  man  who  can  put  his  pen  tc  full 
speed,  and  yet  retain  command  o\'er  every  separate  line 
of  it,  is  Diirer.  He  has  done  this  in  the  illustrations  of 
a  missal  preser\ed  at  Munich,  which  have  been  fairly 
facsimiled;  and  of  these  I  have  placed  several  in  youi 


LnSTE.  1 51 

jO])y]*ng  series,  with  some  of  Turner's  landsca})e  etchiiicrg 
and  otlicr  examples  of  deliberate  pen  Wvrk,  such  as  wil 
advantage  you  in  early  study.  The  proper  use  of"  tlmii 
you  will  find  explained  in  the  catalogue. 

145.  And,  now,  but  one  word  nu^^-e  to-day.  Do  not 
''vipute  to  me  the  impertinence  of  setting  befc^re  you 
what  is  new  in  this  system  of  practice  as  being  cer- 
tainly the  best  method.  No  English  artists  are  yet 
agreed  eiitirely  on  early  methods ;  and  even  Reynolds 
expresses  with  some  hesitation  his  conviction  of  the 
expediency  of  learning  to  draw  with  the  brush.  But 
this  method  that  I  show  you  rests  in  all  essential  points 
on  his  authority,  on  Lionardo's,  or  on  the  evident  as 
well  as  recorded  practice  of  the  most  splendid  Greek 
and  Italian  draughtsmen;  and  you  may  be  assured  it 
will  lead  you,  however  slowly,  to  a  great  and  certain  skill. 
To  what  degree  of  skill,  must  depend  greatly  on  yourselves; 
but  I  know  fiiat  in  practice  of  this  kind  you  cannot 
Bpend  an  hour  without  definitely  gaining,  both  in  true 
knowledge  of  art,  and  in  useful  poAver  of  hand;  and  for 
what  may  appear  in  it  too  difficult,  I  must  shelter  or 
support  myself,  as  in  beginning,  so  in  closing,  this  first 
lecture  on  practice,  by  the  words  of  Reynolds  :  '  The  im- 
petuosity f)f  youth  is  disgusted  at  the  slow  approaches  of 
a  regular  siege,  and  desires  from  mere  impatience  of  labour 
to  take  the  citadel  by  storm.  They  must  therefore  be  told 
again  and  again  tluit  labour  is  the  only  price  of  S(jlid  fame, 
and  that,  wliatever  their  force  of  genius  may  he,  there  *8 
i4*  e»Bv  method  of  becoming  a  good  painter.' 


§iutnxt   I 


LIGHT. 


LIGHT. 

146.  The  plan  of  the  di\isions  of  art-schools  whi  jh  J 
ga\eyo(i  iu  the  last  lecture  is  of  coune  only  a  first  germ 
t>f  classification,  on  which  we  are  to  found  farther  and 
iiioi'e  defined  statement;  but  for  this  very  reason  it  is 
necessary  that  every  term  of  it  should  be  very  clear 
in  your  minds. 

And  especially  I  must  ask  3'ou  to  note  the  sense  in 
wliich  I  use  the  wr)rd  '  mass.'  Artists  usually  employ 
that  word  to  express  the  spaces  of  light  and  darkness, 
or  of  coloui',  into  which  a  picture  is  di\ided.  But  this 
habit  of  theii-s  arises  partly  from  their  always  sjieaking 
of  pictures  in  which  the  lights,  represent  solid  form. 
If  they  had  instead  l)een  speaking. of  flat  tints,  as,  for 
instance,  of  tlie  gohl  and  1)1  ue  in  this  missal  page  (S.  7), 
they  would  not  have  called  them  'masses,'  but  'spaces' 
of  colour.  Kow  l)oth  for  accuracy  and  convenience'  sake, 
you  will  find  it  well  to  observe  this  distinction,  and 
to  call  a  simple  flat  tint  a  S})ace  of  colour;  and  only 
the  representation  of  solid  or  projecting  form  a  mass. 

At   all    c\"ento,   I  mean    myself   always   to   make   this 


156  LIGHT. 

di6tincti<)ri  ;  which  I  think  you  will  see  the  use  of  by 
compaiing  the  missal  page  (S.  7)  with  a  piece  of  iiuished 
painting  (Edu.  2).  The  one  I  call  space  with  colonr  ;  the 
other,  mass  witli  colour ;  1  use  however  the  word  '  line ' 
rather  than  '  space '  in  our  general  scheme,  because  you 
cannot  limit  a  fiat  tint  but  by  a  line,  or  the  locus  of 
a  line  :  whereas  a  gradated  tint,  expressive  of  mass,  ma} 
be  lost  at  its  edges  in  another,  without  any  fixed  limit ; 
and  practically  is  so,  in  the  works  of  the  greatest 
masters. 

147.  You  have  thus,  in  your  hexagonal  scheme,  the 
expression  of  the  univei'sal  manner  of  advance  in  painting  . 
Line  first ;  then  line  enclosing  flat  spaces  coloured  or 
shaded ;  then  the  lines  vanish,  and  the  solid  forms  are 
seen  within  the  spaces.  That  is  the  universal  law  of  ad- 
vance : — 1,  line;  2,  flat  space;  3,  massed  or  solid  space. 
But,  as  you  see,  this  advance  may  be  made,  and  has 
been  made,  by  two  different  roads  ;  one  advancing  always 
through  colour,  the  other  through  light  and  shade. 
And  these  two  roads  are  taken  by  two  entirely  different 
kinds  of  men.  The  way  by  colour  is  taken  by  men  of 
cheerful,  natural,  and  entirely  sane  disposition  in  body 
and  mind,  nmch  resembling,  even  at  its  stn^ngest,  the 
temper  of  well-brought-up  children  : — too  happy  to  think 
deeply,  yet  with  powers  of  imagination  by  which  they 
can  live  other  lives  than  their  actual  ones ;  make-believe 
lives,  while  yet  they  remain  conscious  all  the  whil?  that 
they  are  making  believe — therefore  entirely  sane.     Tley 


JUIGHT.  lb*! 

are  also  absclutely  contented  ;  they  ask  for  no  more  Tiglif 
than  is  ininiediately  around  them,  and  cannot  see  any 
tiling  like  darlmess,  but  only  green  and  bine,  in  tbf" 
earth  and  sea. 

148.  The  ^\'ay  by  light  and  shade  is,  on  the  contru)-y, 
taken  by  men  of  the  highest  powers  of  thought,  and 
most  earnest  desire  for  truth;  they  long  for  light,  and 
for  knowledge  of  all  that  light  can  show.  But  seeking 
tor  light,  they  perceive  also  darkness ;  seeking  for  truth 
and  substance,  they  find  vanity.  They  look  for  form 
in  the  earth, — for  dawn  in  the  sky ;  and  seeking  thes<^, 
they  find  formlessness  in  the  eartli,  and  night  in  the 
sky. 

Now  remember,  in  these  introductory  lectures  I  am 
putting  before  you  the  roots  of  things,  which  are 
strange,  and  dark,  and  often,  it  may  seem,  unconnected 
with  the  branches.  You  may  not  at  present  think  these 
metaphysical  statements  necessary ;  but  as  you  go  on, 
you  will  find  that  having  hold  of  the  clue  to  methods 
of  work  through  their  springs  in  human  character,  you 
may  perceive  unerringly  whci-e  they  lead,  and  what 
constitutes  their  wrongness  and  riglitness;  and  when 
we  have  the  main  principles  laid  down,  all  others  Mill 
develope  themselves  in  due  succession,  and  everything 
will  become  more  clearly  intelligible  to  you  in  tlie  end 
for  having  been  apparently  vague  in  the  begiuning 
You  know  when  one  is  laying  the  foundation  of  a  houoe, 
it  does   not  show  directly  where  the  rooms  are  to  be. 


158  LIGHT. 

149.  1  ju  have  then  these  two  great  divisions  of  human 
niiiid  :  one,  content  \vith  fho  colours  of  things,  whetliei 
they  are  dark  or  light;  the  other  seeking  light  pure 
as  sucli,  and  dreading  darkness  as  such.  One,  also,  con 
tent  ^vith  the  coloured  aspects  and  visionary  shapes  oi 
tilings ;  the  other  seeldng  their  form  and  substance. 
And,  as  I  said,  the  school  of  knowledge,  seeking  light, 
[)erceives,  and  has  to  accept  and  deal  with  obscurity  ; 
and  seeking  form,  it  has  to  accept  and  deal  with  form- 
lessness, or  death. 

Farther,  the  school  of  colour  in  Europe,  using  the 
word  Gothic  in  its  broadest  sense,  is  essentially  Gothic- 
Christian;  and  full  of  comfort  and  peace.  Again,  the 
school  of  light  is  essentially  Greek,  and  full  of  sorrow. 
I  cannot  tell  you  which  is  right,  or  least  wrong.  I  tell 
you  only  what  I  know — this  vital  distinction  bet\veen 
them :  the  Gothic  or  colour  school  is  always  cheerful,  the 
Greek  always  oppressed  by  the  shadow  of  death ;  and  the 
stronger  its  masters  are,  the  closer  that  body  of  death 
grips  tliem.  The  strongest  whose  work  I  can  show  you 
in  recent  periods  is  Holbein;  next  to  him  is  Lionardo; 
and  then  Diirer :  but  of  the  three  Holbein  is  the  strongest, 
and  with  his  help  I  will  put  the  two  schools  in  their 
full  character  before  you  in  a  moment. 

150.  Here  is,  first,  an  entirely  characteristic  piece  of 
the  great  colour  school.  It  is  b}'  Cima  of  Conegliano, 
a  mountaineer,  like  Luini,  born  under  the  Alps  of  Friuli. 
Tlia    Christian    uame    was    John    Baptist;    he    '■    here 


LIGHT.  159 

painting  his  name-Saint;  the  whole  picture  full  of  peace 
and  intense  faith  and  hope,  and  deep  joy  in  light  of 
sky,  and  fruit  and  flower  aud  weed  of  earth.  The  pic- 
ture was  painted  for  the  clmrcli  of  Our  Lady  of  the 
Garden  at  Yenice,  La  Madonna  dell'  Orto  (properly 
Madonna  of  the  KitcJien  Garden),  and  it  is  full  of  sim- 
])]e  flowers,  and  has  the  wild  strawberry  of  Cinia's 
native  mountains  gleaming  through  the  grass. 

Beside  it  I  will  put  a  piece  of  strongest  work  of 
the  school  of  light  and  shade — strongest,  because  Holbein 
was  a  colouris.t  also ;  but  he  belongs,  nevertheless,  essen- 
tially to  the  chiaroscuro  school.  You  know  that  his  name  is 
connected,  in  id«al  work,  chiefly  with  his  '  Dance  of  Death.' 
I  will  not  show  you  any  of  the  terror  of  that ;  only  his 
deepest  thought  of  death,  his  well-known  '  Dead  Christ.' 
It  will  at  once  show  you  how  completely  the  Christian  art 
of  this  school  is  oppressed  by  its  veracity,  and  foi'ced 
to  see  what  is  fearful,  even  in  what  it  most  trusts.  You 
may  think  I  am  showing  you  contrasts  merely  to  tit  my 
theories.  But  there  is  Diirer's  'Knight  and  Death,' his 
greatest  plate;  and  if  I  had  Lionardo's  'Medusa'  here, 
whifh  he  painted  when  onlv  a  boy,  you  would  have  seen 
how  he  was  held  by  the  same  chain.  And  you  cannot 
but  wonder  why,  this  being  the  melancholy  temper  of  the 
great  Greek  or  naturalistic  school,  1  should  have  called 
it  the  school  of  light.  I  call  it  so  because  it  is  thi-eugh 
its  intense  love  of  light  that  the  darkness  becomes  a] :j>a- 
rent  to  it,  and  throui-h  its  intense  love  of  truth  and  form 


160  LIGHT. 

that  all  mystery  becomes  attracti\e  to  it.  And  whciL 
liaAaiig  learDed  these  things,  it  is  joined  to  the  school  oi 
colour,  yon  have  the  perfect,  thongh  always,  as  I  wi\] 
show  '^'ou,  pensive,  art  of  Titian  and  his  folh  wers. 

151.  But  remember,  its  first  development,  and  all  its 
final  power,  depends  on  Greek  sorrow,  and  Greek  re 
ligion. 

The  school  of  light  is  fonnded  in  the  Doric  worshij)  <A 
Apollo  and  the  Ionic  worship  of  Athena,  as  the  spirits 
of  life  in  the  light,  and  of  life  in  the  air,  opposed  each 
to  their  o^vn  contrary  deity  of  death — Apollo  to  the 
Python,  Athena  to  the  Gorgon — Apollo  as  life  in  light, 
to  the  earth  spirit  of  corruption  in  darlfness,  Athena  aa 
life  by  motion,  to  the  Gorgon  spirit  of  death  by  panse, 
ft-eezing,  or  turning  to  stone  :  both  of  the  great  divinities 
taking  their  glory  from  the  e\i\  they  have  conquered  ; 
both  of  them,  when  angry,  taking  to  men  the  form 
of  the  evil  which  is  their^  opj)osite — Apollo  slaying  by 
poisoned  arrow,  by  pestilence  ;  Athena  b}^  cold,  the  black 
aigis  on  her  breast.  These  are  the  definite  and  direct 
expressions  of  the  Greek  thoughts  respecting  death  and 
life.  But  nnderl}dng  both  these,  and  far  more  mysterious, 
dreadful,  and  yet  beautiful,  there  is  the  Greek  conception 
ol  spiritual  darkness ;  of  the  anger  of  fate,  whether 
f <  n-edoomed  or  avenging ;  the  root  and  theme  of  all 
Greek  tragedy  ;  the  anger  of  the  Erinn^-es,  and  Demeter 
Erinnys,  compared  to  which  the  anger  either  of  Apollc 
or  Athena  is    temporary  and    partial  :— and   alsr,   whllfl 


LIGHT.  101 

Apollo  or  Athena  onlj'  slay,  the  power  of  Demeter  rtkI 
the  Eumeuides  is  over  the  whole  life  ;  so  that  in  the 
stories  of  Bellerophon,  of  Ilippolytus,  of  Orestes,  of 
Q^dipns,  you  ha^e  au  incomparably  deeper  shadow  tJian 
any  that  was  possible  to  the  thought  of  later  ages,  wlicu 
the  hope  of  the  Kesurrection  had  become  definite.  And 
if  you  keep  tliis  in  mind,  you  will  find  every  name  and 
legend  of  the  oldest  history  become  full  of  meaning  to 
you.  All  the  mythic  accounts  of  Greek  sculpture  begin 
in  the  legends  of  the  family  of  Tantalus.  The  main  one 
is  the  making  of  the  ivory  shouldei  of  Pelops  after  Deme- 
ter has  eaten  the  shoulder  of  flesh.  With  that  you  ha\e 
Broteas,  the  brother  of  Pelops,  carving  the  fii-st  statue  of 
the  mother  of  the  gods  ;  and  you  have  his  sister,  Niobe, 
weeping  herself  to  stone  under  the  anger  of  the  deities 
of  light.  Then  Pelops  himself,  the  dark-faced,  gi\es 
name  to  the  Peloponnesus,  which  you  may  therefore  read 
as  the  *  isle  of  darkness ; '  but  its  central  city,  Sparta,  the 
'  B0\m  city,'  is  connected  with  all  the  ideas  of  the  earth  as 
life-giving.  And  from  her  you  have  Helen,  the  repre- 
5entati\e  of  light  in  beauty,  and  the  Fratres  Helenae — 
'  lucida  sidera ; '  and,  on  the  other  side  of  the  hills,  the 
l)rightness  of  Argos,  with  its  correlative  darkness  over 
the  Atreidaj,  marked  to  you  by  Helios  tiiniing  away  his 
face  from  the  feast  of  Thj^estes. 

152.  Then  join  with  these  the  Northern  legends  con- 
nected with  the  air.  It  does  not  matter  whether  you 
take  Dorus  as  the  son  of  Apollo  or  the  son  of  ITellen  •   hs 


162  LIGHT. 

equally  symbolizes  the  power  of  light :  while  his  brother 
/Eolus,  through  all  his  descendants,  chiefly  in  Sisyj^hus,  is 
confused  or  associated  with  the  real  god  of  the  winds,  and 
represents  to  you  the  power  of  the  air.  And  then,  as  this 
conception  enters  into  art,  you  have  the  myths  of  Daeda- 
lus, the  flight  of  Icarus,  and  the  story  of  Phrixus  and 
ITelle,  giving  you  continual  associations  of  the  physical 
ail-  and  light,  ending  in  the  power  of  Athena  over  Corinth 
as  well  as  over  Athens.  T^ow,  once  having  the  clue,  you  can 
work  out  the  sequels  for  yourselves  better  than  I  can  for 
you  ;  and  you  will  soon  find  even  the  earliest  or  slightest 
grotesques  of  Greek  art  become  full  of  interest  to  you. 
For  nothing  is  more  wonderful  than  the  depth  of  meaning 
which  nations  in  their  first  iays  of  thought,  like'  children, 
can  attach  to  the  rudest  symbols  ;  and  what  to  us  is  gro- 
tesque or  ugly,  like  a  little  child's  doll,  can  speak  to  them 
the  loveliest  things.  I  have  brought  you  to-day  a  few 
more  examples  of  early  Greek  vase  painting,  respecting 
which  remember  generally  that  its  finest  development 
is  for  the  most  part  sepulchral.  You  have,  in  the 
first  period,  always  energy  in  the  figures,  light  in  the 
sky  or  iipon  the  figures  ;*  in  the  second  period,  while  the 
conception  of  the  divine  powei-  remains  the  same,  it  is 
thought  of  as  in  repose,  and  the  light  is  in  the  god,  not 
in  the  sky  ;  in  the  time  of  decline,  the  divine  power  is 
gradually  disbelieved,  and  all  form  and  light  are  lost 
together.  With  that  period  I  wish  you  to  have  nothing 
*  See  Note  in  the  Catalogne  on  No.  201. 


IJOHT. 


163 


to  do.  You  shall  not  have  a  single  example  of  it  se\ 
before  you,  but  shall  rather  learu  to  recognise  afterwards 
what  is  base  by  its  strangeness.  These,  which  are  to 
come  early  in  the  third  group  of  your  Standard  series, 
will  enough  represent  to  you  the  elements  of  early  and 
lato  conception  in  the  Greek  mind  of  the  deities  of 
Ught. 

153.  First  (S.  204),  you  have  Apollo  ascending 
fi'om  the  sea ;  thought  of  as  the  physical  sunrise :  only 
a  circle  of  light  for  his  head  ;  his  chariot  horses,  seen 
foreshortened,  black  against  the  day-break,  their  feet  not 
yet  risen  above  the  horizon.  Underneath  is  the  paint 
ing  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  same  vase :  Athena 
as  the  morning  breeze,  and  Hermes  as  the  morning 
cloud,  flying  across  the  ^vaves  before  the  sunrise.  At 
the  distance  I  now  hold  tliem  from  you,  it  is  scarcely 
possible  for  you  to  see  that  they  are  figures  at  all,  so 
like  are  they  to  broken  fragments  of  flying  mist ;  and 
when  you  look  close,  you  will  see  that  as  Apollo's  face 
is  invisible  in  the  circle  of  light,  Mercury's  is  invisible 
in  the  broken  form  of  cloud :  but  I  can  tell  you  that 
it  is  conceived  as  reverted,  looking  back  to  Athena ; 
the  grotesque  appearance  of  feature  in  the  front  is  the 
outline  of  his  hair. 

These  two  paintings  are  excessively  rude,  and  of  the 
archaic  period ;  the  deities  being  yet  thought  of  chiefly 
as  physical  powers  in  violent  agency. 

Underneath   these    two    are   Athena   and   llern\e8,   Id 


164  LIGHT. 

the  types  attained  about  the  time  of  Phidias ;  but,  ol 
coiu'se,  rudely  drawn  on  the  vase,  and  still  more  rudely 
in  this  print  from  Le  Normant  and  De  Witte.  For  it 
is  impossible  (as  you  will  soon  find  if  you  try  for  your- 
self) to  give  on  a  plane  surface  the  grace  of  figures 
di-awn  on  one  of  solid  curvature,  and  adapted  to  all 
its  curves :  and  among  other  minor  differences,  Athena's 
lance  is  in  the  original  nearly  twice  as  tall  as  herself, 
and  has  to  be  cut  short  to  come  into  the  print  at  all. 
Still,  there  is  enough  here  to  show  you  what  I  want 
you  to  see — the  repose,  and  entirely  realized  personality, 
of  the  deities  as  conceived  in  the  Phidian  period.  The 
relation  of  the  two  deities  is,  I  believe,  the  same  as  in 
the  painting  above,  though  probably  there  is  another 
added  of  more  definite  kind.  But  the  physical  mean- 
irig  still  remains— Athena  unhelmeted,  as  the  gentle. 
morning  wind,  commanding  the  cloud  Hermes  to  slow 
flight.  His  petasus  is  slung  at  his  back,  meaning  that 
the  clouds  are  not  yet  opened  or  expanded  in  the  sky. 

154.  Next  (S.  205),  you  have  Athena,  again  un- 
helmeted and  crowned  with  leaves,  walking  between 
two  nymphs,  who  are  crowned  also  with  leaves ;  and 
all  the  three  hold  flowers  in  their  hands,  and  there  is 
a  fawn  walking  at  Athena's  feet. 

This  is  still  Athena  as  the  morning  air,  but  upon  the 
earth  instead  of  in  the  sky,  with  the  nymphs  of  the 
dew  beside  her ;  the  flowers  and  leaves  opening  as  they 
breathe  upon  them.     Note   the  white  gleam  of  light  or 


LIGHT.  165 

the  fawn's  broatst ;  and  v;oiupare  it  with  the  next  fol 
lowing  examples: — (uuderiieath  this  one  is  the  contesl 
of  Athena  and  Tuseidun,  which  does  not  bear  on  oiu 
present  subject). 

Kext  (S,  206),  Aitpinis  as  the  moon  of  morning, 
walking  low  on  the  hills,  and  singing  to  her  lyre  ;  the 
fawn  beside  her,  with  the  gleam  of  light  of  sunrise  v)ri 
its  ear  and  breast.  Those  of  yon  who  are  often  on* 
in  the  dawn-time  know  that  there  is  no  moon  so  glorious 
as  that  gleaming  crescent  ascending  before  the  sun. 
though  in  its  wane. 

Underneath,  Artemis  and  Apr)ll(),  of  Phidian  timt. 

Next  *(S.  207),  Apollo  walking  on  the  earth,  god 
of  the  morning,  singing  to  his  lyre  ;  the  fawn  beside 
him,  again  with  the  gleam  of  light  on  its  breast.  And 
underneath,  Apollo,  crossing  the  sea  to  Delphi,  of  the 
Phidian  time. 

1.55.  Now  you  (jannot  but  be  struck  in  these  three 
examples  with  the  siniilai'ity  of  action  in  Athena,  Apollo, 
and  Ai-temis,  drawn  as  deities  of  the  morning ;  and 
with  the  association  in  eyjry  case  of  the  fawn  with 
them.  It  has  ])een  said  (I  will  not  interrupt  you  witli 
authorities)  that  the  fawn  belongs  to  Apollo  and  Diana 
because  stags  are  sensitive  to  nnisic  ;  (are  thev  ?V  Thif 
you  see  the  fawn  is  here  with  Athena  of  the  dew,  thougli 
fihe  has  no  lyi-e  ;  aiid  T  have  myself  ao  doubt  that  in  tliin 
particular  relation  to  the  gods  of  morning  it  always 
stands  as  the  symbol  ol"   W!i\(M-ing  and  glancing  uKjtion 


1^6  .  LIGHT. 

Oil  the  ground,  as  well  as  of  the  light  f.rid  shad^AH 
through  the  leaN  es,  chequering  the  ground  as  the  fawn 
is  dappled.  Similarly  the  spots  on  the  nebris  of  DiO' 
nysus,  thought  of  sonietinies  as  stars  («^«  riT?  rav  'ia-rpm 
ir^ixixlxi^  Diodorus,  II.  I),  as  well  as  those-  of  his  pan- 
thers, and  the  cloudings  of  the  tortoise-shell  of  Hermes, 
are  all  significant  of  this  light  of  the  sky  broken  by 
cloud-shadow. 

156.  You  observiB  also  that  in  all  the  three  examples 
the  fawn  has  light  on  its  ears,  and  face,  as  well  aa 
its  breast.  In  the  earliest  Greek  drawings  of  animals, 
bars  of  white  are  used  as  one  means  of  detaching  the 
figures  from  the  ground;  ordinarily  on  the  under  side 
of  them,  marking  the  lighter  colour  of  the  hair  in  ^\ild 
animals.  But  the  placing  of  this  bar  of  white,  or  the 
direction  of  the  face  in  deities  of  light,  (the  faces  and 
flesh  of  women  being  always  represented  as  white),  may 
become  expressive  of  the  direction  of  the  liglit,  when 
that  direction  is  important.  Thus  we  are  enabled  at 
once  to  read  the  intention  of  this  Greek  symbol  of  the 
course  of  a  day  (in  the  centre-piece  of  S.  208,  which 
gives  you  the  types  of  Hermes).  At  the  top  you  have 
an  archaic  representation  of  Ilei'mes  steaKng  lo  from 
Ai-gus.  Argus  is  here  the  Night ;  his  grotesque  featurer 
monstrous;  his  hair  overshadowing  his  shoulders;  Her- 
mes on  tiptoe,  stealing  upon  him,  and  taking  the  cord 
which  is  fastened  to  the  hoi-n  of  lo  out  of  his  hand 
without    his    feeling   *t.      Then,   underneath,    you    have 


LIGHT .  167 

the  course  of  an  entire  clay.  Apollo  first,  on  the  left, 
dark,  entering  his  chariot,  the  sun  not  yet  risen.  In 
front  of  him  Artemis,  as  the  moon,  ascending  before 
him,  playing  on  her  Ijre,  and  lookhig  back  to  the 
film.  In  the  centre,  behind  the  horses,  Hermes,  as  the 
cumulus  cloud  at  mid-day,  wearing  his  petasus  height- 
ened U)  a  cone,  and  holding  a  flcmer  in  his  nglit  hand; 
indicating  the  nourishment  of  the  flowers  by  the  rain 
fi-om  the  heat-cloud.  Finally,  on  the  right,  Latona, 
going  down  as  the  evening,  lighted  from  the  right  by 
the  sun,  now  sunk ;  and  with  her  feet  reverted,  signify- 
ing the  unwdllingness  of  the  departing  day. 

Finally,  underneath,  you  have  Hermes  of  the  Phidian 
period,  as  the  floating  cumulus  cloud,  almost  shapeless 
(as  you  see  him  at  this  distance) ;  witli  the  tortoise-shell 
lyre  in  his  hand,  barred  with  black,  and  a  fleece  of  white 
cloud,  not  level,  but  oblique,  under  his  feet.  (Compare 
the  '<J<<i  r£),  y.oiXai — vXuytoci,^  and  the  relations  of  the 
'  aiylSoi  iluoxoi  'A6«¥ct^^  witli  tlio  clouds  as  the  moon'a 
messengei-s,  in  Aristophanes ;  and  note  of  Hermes  gene- 
i-ally,  that  you  ne\'er  find  him  flying  as  a  Yictory  flies, 
but  always,  if  moving  fast  at  all,  clambering  along,  as 
it  were,  as  a  cloud  gathers  and  heaps  itself:  the  Gor- 
gons  stretch  and  stride  in  their  flight,  half  kneeling,  for 
the  same  reason,  running  or  gliding  shapelessly  along  in 
this  stealthy  way.) 

157.  And  now  take  this  last  illustration,  of  a  very  dif- 
fei-ent  kind.     Here  is  an  efi^ect  of  morning  light  by  Tiirnei 


1.68  LIGHT. 

(S.  301),  on  the  rocks  of  Otley-hill,  near  Leeds,  drawn  long 
ago,  when  Apollo,  and  Artemis,  and  Athena,  still  sometimes 
were  seen,  and  felt,  even  near  Leeds.  The  original  drawing 
Ib  one  of  the  great  Farnley  series,  and  entirely  beautiful. 
1  ha\e  shown,  in  the  last  volume  of  '  Modern  Painters,' 
h(t\v  well  Turner  knew  the  meaning  of  Greek  legends: — 
he  was  not  thinkijig  of  them,  however,  when  he  made 
this  design  ;  but,  unintentionally,  has  given  us  the  very 
effect  of  morning  light  we  want:  the  glittering  of  the 
sunshine  on  dewy  grass,  half  dark ;  and  the  narrow 
gleam  of  it  on  the  sides  and  head  of  the  stag  and 
hind. 

158.  These  few  instances  will  be  enough  to  show  you 
how  we  may  read  in  early  art  of  the  Greeks  their  strong 
impressions  of  the  power  of  light.  You  will  find  the  sub- 
ject entered  into  at  somewhat  greater  length  in  my  '  Queen 
of  the  Air ; '  and  if  you  will  look  at  the  beginning  of 
the  7th  book  of  Plato's  '  Polity,',  and  read  carefully  the 
[)assages  in  the  context  respecting  the  sun  and  intel 
lectual  sight,  you  will  see  how  intimately  this  physical 
love  of  light  was  connected  with  their  philosophy,  in 
its  search,  as  blind  and  captive,  for  better  knowledge. 
I  hall  not  attempt  to  define  for  you  to-day  the  more 
complex  but  much  shallower  forms  which  this  love  of 
light,  and  the  philosoj^hy  that  accompanies  it,  take  ir 
the  mediaeval  mind;  only  remember  that  in  future,, 
when  I  briefly  speak  of  the  Greek  school  of  art  with 
reference  to  questions   of    delineation,    I   mean   the  tin 


LIGHT.  169 

tire  range  of  the  schools,  from  Homer's  days  to  our 
owii,  which  concern  themselves  with  the  representation 
of  light,  and  the  effects  it  produces  on  material 
form — beginning  practically  for  us  mth  these  Greek 
vase  paintings,  and  closing  practically  for  us  with 
Turner's  sunset  on  the  Temeraire ;  being  throughcmt  a 
school  of  captivity  and  sadness,  but  of  intense  power ; 
and  which  in  its  technical  method  of  shadow  on 
material  form,  as  well  as  in  its  essejitial  temper,  is 
centrally  represented  to  you  by  Diirer's  two  great 
en£rra\in28  of  the  '  Melencolia '  and  the  '  Knight  and 
Death.'  On  the  other  hand,  when  I  briefly  speak  to 
you  of  the  Gothic  school,  with  reference  to  delineation, 
I  mean  the  entire  and  much  more  extensive  range  ot 
schools  extending  from  the  earliest  art  in  Central  Asia 
and  Egypt  down  to  our  own  day  in  India  and  China: — 
schools  which  have  been  content  to  obtain  beautiful 
harmonies  of  colour -without  any  representation  of  light; 
and  which  have,  many  of  them,  rested  in  such  imperfect 
expressions  of  form  as  could  be  so  obtained  ;  schools 
usually  in  some  measure  childish,  or  restricted  in  intel- 
lect, and  similarly  childish  or  restricted  in  their  philo- 
eophies  or  faiths:  but  contented  in  the  restriction  ;  and 
in  the  more  powerful  races,  capable  of  advance  to  nobler 
development  than  the  Greek  schools,  though  the  con- 
summate art  of  Europe  has  only  l)ecn  accijinplisLcd  liy 
the  union  of  both.  How  that  union  was  effected,  ] 
will  endeavour  to  show  you  in   ray  next  lecture ;    to-day 


170  LIGHT. 

I  shall  take  note  only  of  the  points  bearing  on  oui 
immediate  practice.  "^ 

159.  A  certain  number  of  you,  by  faculty  and  natural 
disposition, — and  all,  so  far  as  you  are  interested  in  modern 
art,— will  necessarily  have  to  put  yourselves  under  the 
discipline  of  the  Greelc  or  chiaroscuro  school,  which  i.' 
directed  primarily  to  the  attainment  of  the  power  (if 
representing  form  by  pure  contrast  of  light  and  shade. 
I  say,  the  '  discipline  '  of  the  Greek  school,  both  because, 
followed  faithf nil}-,  it  is  indeed  a  severe  one,  and  because 
to  follow  it  at  all  is,  for  persons  fond  of  colour,  often 
a  course  of  painful  self-denial,  from  which  young  student? 
are  eager  to  escape.  And  yet,  when  the  laws  of  both 
schools  are  rightly  obeyed,  the  most  perfect  discipline  is 
that  of  the  colourists ;  for  they  see  and  draw  everything, 
while  the  chiaroscurists  must  leave  much  indeterminate 
in  mystery,  or  invisible  in  gloom :  and  there  are  therefore 
many  licentious  and  vulgar  forms  of  art  connected  with  the 
chiaroscuro  school,  both  in  painting  and  etching,  which 
have  no  parallel  among  the  colourists.  But  both  schools, 
rightly  followed,  recpiire  first  of  all  absolute  accuracy  of 
delineation.  This  you  need  not  hope  to  escape.  Whether 
you  fill  your  spaces  with  colours,  or  with  shadows,  they 
must  equally  be  of  the  true  outline  and  in  true  gradations. 
I  have  been  thirty  years  telling  modern  students  of  art 
this  in  vain.  I  mean  to  say  it  to  you  only  once,  for  the 
statement  is  too  important  to  be  weakened  b}  repetition 

Without  perfec!"  delineation  of  form  and  peifect  grada 


LIGHT.  171 

tion  of  space,  neither  n^ble  coloiii*  is  possible,  nor  noble 
light.  - 

160.  It  may  make  this  more  believable  to  you  if  1 
put  beside  each  other  a  piece  of  detail  fi-om  each  school. 
I  gave  you  the  St.  John  of  Cima  da  Conegliano  'for  a 
type  of  the  colour  school.  Here  is  one  of  the  sprays  of 
oak  which  rise  against  the  sky  of  it  in  the  distance, 
enlarged  to  about  its  real  size  (Edu.  12).  I  hope  to 
draw  it  better  for  you  at  Yenice;  but  this  will  show 
you  with  what  perfect  care  the  colourist  has  followed 
the  outline  of  every  leaf  in  the  sky.  Beside  it,  I  put 
a  chiaroscurist  drawing  (at  least,  a  photograph  of  one), 
Dlirer's,  from  nature,  of  the  common  wild  wall-cabbage 
(Edu.  32).  It  is  the  most  perfect  piece  of  delineation 
by  flat  tint  I  have  ever  seen,  in  its  mastery  of  the 
perspective  of  every  leaf,  and  its  attainment  almost 
of  the  bloom  of  texture,  merely  by  its  exquisitely 
tender  and  decisive  laying  of  the  colour.  These  two 
examples  ouglit,  I  think,  to  satisfy  you  as  to  the  precision 
of  outline  of  both  schools,  and  the  power  of  expression 
which  may  be  obfained  by  flat  tints  laid  within  such 
outline. 

161.  Next,  here  are  two  examples  of  the  gradated 
shading  expressive  of  the  forms  within  the  outline,  by  two 
mastere  of  the  chiaroscuro  school.  The  first  (S.  12)  shows 
you  Lionardo's  method  of  work,  both  with  chalk  and  the 
silver  point.  The  second  (S.  302),  Turner'^work  in  moz- 
Eotiut ;    both   n)aster8   doing   their   bust.      Observe    that 


1 72  LIGHT. 

this  plate  of  Turner's,  which  he  worked  on  so  long  thai 
it  was  never  published,  is  of  a  subject  peculiarly-  de 
pending  on  effects  of  mystery  and  concealment,  the  fall  oi 
the  Reuss  under  the  Devil's  Bridge  on  the  St.  Gothard ; 
(the  o//^  bridge ;  you  may  still  see  it  under  the  existing 
one,  which  was  built  since  Turner's  drawing  was  made). 
If  ever  outline  could  be  dispensed  with,  you  would  think 
it  might  be  so  in  this  confusion  of  cloud,  foam,  and 
darkness.  But  here  is  Turner's  own  etching  on  the 
plate,  (Edu.  35  F),  made  under  the  mezzotint ;  and  of 
all  the  studies  of  rock  outline  made  by  his  hand,  it  is 
the  most  decisive  and  quietly  complete. 

162.  Again  ;  in  the  Lionardo  sketches,  many  parts  are 
lost  in  obscurity,  or  are  left  intentionally  uncertain  and 
mysterious,  even  in  the  light ;  and  you  might  at  first 
imagine  some  permission  of  escape  had  been  here  given  j^ou 
from  the  terrible  law  of  delineation.  But  the  slightest 
attempts  to  copy  them  will  show  you  that  the  tei-minal 
lines  are  inimitably  subtle,  unaccusably  true,  and  filled  by 
gi-adations  of  shade  so  determined  and  measured,  that  the 
addition  of  a  grain  of  the  lead  or  chalk  as  large  as  the 
filament  of  a  moth's  wing,  would  make  an  appreciable 
difference  in  them. 

This  is  grievous,  you  think,  and  hopeless.  Ko,  it  is 
delightful  and  full  of  hope :  delightful,  to  see  what  mar- 
vellous things  can  be  done  by  men  ;  and  full  of  hope,  if 
your  hope  is  ^e  right  one,  of  being  one  day  able  to 
rejoice  more  in  what  others  are,  than  in  what  yoi?  are 


LIGHT.  173 

yourself,  and  more  in  the  sti-ength  that  is  for  ever  above 
you,  than  in  that  you  can  ever  attain. 

163.  i3nt  you  can  attain  much,  if  you  will  work  reve- 
ren<"ly  and  patiently,  and  hope  for  no  success  through 
ill-regulated  effort.  It  is,  however,  most  assuredly  at 
this  point  of  your  study  that  the  full  strain  on  your 
patience  will  begin.  The  exercises  in  line-drawing  and 
flat  laying  of  colour  are  irksome ;  but  they  are  definite, 
and  within  certain  limits,  sure  to  be  successful  if  practised 
with  moderate  care.  But  the  expression  of  form  by 
shadow  requires  mure  subtle  patience,  and  involves  the 
necessity  of  frequent  and  mortifying  faihire,  not  to  speak 
of  the  self-denial  which  I  said  was  needful  in  persons  fond 
of  colour,  to  draw  in  mere  light  and  shade.  If,  indeed, 
you  were  going  to  be'  artists,  or  could  give  any  great 
length  of  time  to  study,  it  might  be  possible  for  you  to 
leai-n  wh'jlly  in  the  Yenetian  school,  and  to  reach  form 
through  colour.  But  without  the  most  intense  application 
this  is  not  possible  ;  and  practically,  it  will  be  necessary  for 
you,  as  soon  as  you  have  gained  the  power  of  outlining 
accurately,  and  of  laying  flat  colour,  to  learn  to  express 
solid  foi-m  as  shown  by  light  and  sliade  only.  And 
there  is  this  great  advantage  in  doing  so,  that  many 
forms  are  more  or  less  disguisect  by  colour,  and  tliat  we  can 
only  represent  them  completely  to  othei-s,  or  rapidly 
and  easily  record  them  for  ourselves,  by  the  use  of 
tiliade  alone.  A  single  instance  will  show  yuu  what 
I    mean,     i'cjhaps   there    aic    lew   fiuwcrs  of  which  llic 


174  LIGHT. 

impression  on  the  eye  is  more  definitely  of  flat  colour 
than  tlie  scarlet  geranium.  But  you  would  find,  if  you 
were  to  try  to  paint  it, — first,  that  no  pigment  o)uM 
approach  the  beauty  of  its  scarlet;  and  secondly,  that 
the  brightness  of  the  hue  dazzled  the  eye,  and  prevented 
its  following  the  real  arrangement  of  the  cluster  of  flowers. 
I  have  drawn  for  you  here  (at  least  this  is  a  mezzotint 
fi-om  my  drawing),  a  single  cluster  of  the  scarlet  geranium, 
in  mere  light  and  shade  (Edu,  32  B.),  and  I  think  you 
will  feel  that  its  domed  form,  and  the  flat  lying  of  the 
[)etals  one  o\er  the  other,  in  the  \aulted  roof  of  it,  can  be 
seen  better  thus  than  if  they  had  been  painted  scarlet. 
164.  Also  this  study  will  be  useful  to  you,  in  showing 
how  entirely  effects  of  light  depend  on  delineation,  and 
gradation  of  spaces,  and  not  on"  methods  of  shading. 
And  this  is  the  second  great  practical  matter  I  want 
you  to  remember  to-day.  All  effects  of  light  and  shade 
depend  not  on  the  method  or  execution  of  shadows,  but 
on  their  rightness  of  place,  form,  and  depth.  There 
is  indeed  a  loveliness  of  execution  added  to  the  rightness, 
by  the  great  masters,  but  you  cannot  obtain  that  till  you 
l)ecome  one.  Shadow  cannot  be  laid  thoroughly  well, 
any  more  than  lines  can  be  drawn  steadily,  but  by  a  long 
practised  hand,  and  tlie  attempts  to  imitate  the  shading 
of  fine  draughtsmen,  by  dotting  and  hatching,  are  just 
as  ridiculous  as  it  would  be  to  endeavour  to  imitate  their 
instantanetjus  lines  b}'  a  series  of  re-touchings.  You 
will  (;ften  indeed  see  in  Lionardo's  work,  and  in  Michae. 


LIGHT.  17fi 

Augelo's^  shadow  wrought  laboriously  to  an  extreme 
of  fineness ;  hut  when  you  look  into  it,  you  will  find 
tliat  they  have  always  been  drawing  more  and  more 
form  within  the  space,  and  never  finishing  for  the  sake 
of  added  texture,  but  of  added  fact.  And  all  thc«c 
effects  of  transparency  and  reflected  light,  aimed  at  in 
common  chalk  drawings,  are  wholl}'  spurious.  For  since, 
as  I  told  you,  all  lights  are  shades  compared  to  higher 
lights,  and  lights  only  as  compared  to  lower  ones,  it 
follows  that  there  can  be  no  difference  in  their  quality 
as  such;  but  that  light  is  opaque  when  it  expresses 
substance,  and  transparent  when  it  expresses  space ; 
and  shade  is  also  opaque  when  it  expresses  substance, 
and  transparent  when  it  expresses  space.  But  it  is 
tiot,  even  then,  transjDarent  in  the  conmion  sense  of  that 
word ;  nor  is  its  appearance  to  be  obtained  by  dotting 
or  cr<jss  hatching,  but  by  touches  so  tender  as  to  look 
like  mist.  And  now  we  find  the  use  of  having  Lionardo 
for  our  guide.  He  is  supreme  in  all  questions  of  exe- 
cution, and  in  his  28th  chapter,  you  will  find  that 
shadows  are  to  be  '  dolce  e  sf umose,'  to  be  tender,  and 
l(x>k  as  if  they  were  exlialed,  or  breathed  on  the  paper. 
Then,  look  at  any  of  Michael  Angelo's  finished  drawings, 
or  of  Correggio's  sketches,  and  you  will  see  that  the  true 
nui-se  of  liglit  is  in  art,  as  in  nature,  the  cloud  ;  a  misty 
and  tender  darkness,  made  lovely  by  gradation. 

165.     And   how   absolutely  independent   it   is  of   ma- 
tiirial  or  method  of  prodiuttloii,  liow  absohitcly  dependent 


176  LIGHl 

311  riglitiiGSS  of  place  and  depth, — tliere  are  now  before 
yon  instances  enough  to  prove.  Here  is  Durer"'s  work  iii 
Hat  colour,  represented  by  the  photograph,  in  its  smokj 
brown  ;  Turner's,  in  washed  sejjia,  and  in  mezzotint ;  Lio 
nardo's,  in  pencil  and  in  chalk  ;  on  the  sci'een  in  front  oi 
YOU  a  large  study  in  charcoal.  In  every  one  of  these  draw- 
ings, the  material  of  shadow  is  absolutely  opaque.  But 
photograph-stain,  chalk,  lead,  ink,  or  charcoal, — every 
one  of  them,  laid  by  the  master's  hand,  becomes  full 
of  light  by  gradation  only.  Here  is  a  moonlight  (Edu. 
31  B.),  in  which  you  would  think  the  moon  shone  through 
e\ery  cloud  ;  yet  the  clouds  are  mere  single  dashes  of 
sepia,  imitated  by  the  brown  stain  of  a  photograph; 
similarly,  in  these  plates  from  the  Liber  Studiorum 
the  white  paper  becomes  transparent  or  opaque,  ex- 
actl}-  as  the  master  chooses.  Here,  on  the  granite 
rock  of  the  St.  Gothard  (S.  302),  is  wdiite  paper  made 
opaque,  every  light  represents  solid  bosses  of  rock,  oi 
balls  of  foam.  But  in  this  study  of  twilight  (S.  303)^ 
the  same  white  paper  (coarse  old  stuff  it  is,  too!) 
is  made  as  transparent  as  crystal,  and  every  frag- 
ment of  it  represents  clear  and  far  away  light  in  the 
sky  of  evening  in  Italy.  From  which  the  practical 
conclusion  for  you  is,  that  you  are  never  to  trouble 
yourselves  with  any  questions  as  to  the  means  of  shade 
or  light,  but  only  with  the  right  government  of  the 
means  at  your  disposal.  And  it  is  a  most  grave  erroi 
in   the   system  of   many  of   our  public  drawing-schools 


LIGHT.  177 

that  the  students  are  peniiittcd  to  spend  weeks  of  lHl)our 
in  giving  attractive  appearance,  by  delicacy  of  texture 
to  chiaroscuro  drawings  in  wliich  ever}'  form  is  false, 
and  every  relation  of  depth  untrue.  A  most  unliapp}' 
form  of  error  ;  for  it  not  only  delays,  and  often  wholly  ar- 
rests, their  advance  in  tlieir  own  art ;  but  it  pre\ents  what 
ought  to  take  place  co-i'clativcly  with  their  executive 
practice,  the  formation  of  their  taste  by  the  accurate 
study  of  the  models  from  which  they  draw.  I  do  not 
doubt  but  that  you  have  more  pleasure  in  looking  at 
the  large  drawing  of  the  arch  of  Bourges,  behind  mt, 
(Rei.  1),  than  at  common  sketches  of  sculpture.  The 
reason  you  like  it  is,  that  the  whole  effort  of  the 
worlanan  has  been  to  show  you,  not  his  own  skill 
in  shading,  but  the  play  of  the  light  on  the  surfaces  of 
the  leaves,  which  is  Lively,  because  the  sculpture  itself 
is  fii-st-rate.  And  I  must  so  far  anticipate  what  we 
shall  discover  when  we  come  to  the  subject  of  sculpture, 
as  to  tell  you  the  two  main  principles  of  good  sculpture: 
first,  that  its  masters  think  bef(;re  all  other  matters  of 
the  right  placing  of  naasses  ;  secondly,  that  they  gi\e 
life  l)y  flexui'e  of  sui-face,  not  by  quantity  of  detail ; 
for  sculpture  is  indeed  only  light  and  shade  drawing 
in  stone. 

]()6.  Much  that  I  have  endeavoured  to  teach  on  this 
6\ibject  has  been  gravely  misunderstood,  by  both  young 
paintere  and  sculptors,  especially  by  the  latter.  X)ecau8€ 
I  am  always  ui'ging  them  to   imitate  organic  forms,  they 

a* 


178  LIGHT. 

think  if  they  car\e  quantities  of  flowers  and  leaves,  and 
copy  them  from  tlie  life,  they  have  done  all  that  is  needed 
But  the  difficulty  is  not  to  carve  quantities  of  leaves 
Anybody  can  do  tliat.  The  difficulty  is,  never  anpvhcre 
to  have  an  unnecessary  leaf.  Over  the  arch  on  the  right, 
you  see  there  is  a  cluster  of  seven,  with  their  shoi-t 
stalks  springing  from  a  thick  stem.  Now,  you  could  n(  >t 
turn  one  of  those  leaves  a  hair's-hreadth  out  of  its  place, 
nor  thicken  one  of  their  stems,  nor  alter  the  angle  at 
which  each  slips  over  the  next  one,  without  spoiling 
the  whole,  as  much  as  you  would  a  piece  of  melody  by 
missing  a  note.  That  is  disposition  of  masses.  Again, 
hi  the  group  on  the  left,  while  the  j)iacing  of  every 
leaf  is  just  as  skilful,  they  are  made  more  interesting 
yet  by  the  lovely  undulation  of  their  surfaces,  so  that 
not  one  of  them  is  in  equal  light  with  another.  And 
that  is  so  in  all  good  sculpture,  without  exception.  From 
the  Elgin  marbles  down  to  the  lightest  tendril  tliat 
curls  round  a  capital  in  the  thirteenth  century,  evei-y 
piece  r)f  stone  that  has  been  touched  by  the  hand  of 
a  master,  becomes  soft  with  under-life,  not  resembling 
nature  merely  in  skin-texture,  nor  in  fibres  of  leaf, 
or  veins  of  flesh  ;  but  in  the  broad,  tender,  unspeakably 
subtle  undulati(jn  of  its  organic  form. 

167.  Returning  then  to  the  question  of  our  own 
practice,  I  believe  that  all  difficulties  in  method  will 
vanish,  if  only  you  culti\'ate  with  care  enough  the  hal)il 
of    acf'urate    observation,    and    if    you    think    only  o/ 


LIGHT,  179 

nialdng  your  light  and  shade  true,  whether  it  he  deli- 
cate or  not.  But  there  are  three  divisions  or  decrees  ol 
truth  to  be  sought  for,  in  light  and  shade,  by  threi 
several  modes  of  study,  which  I  must  ask  you  to  dis- 
tinguish carefully. 

T.  When  objects  are  lighted  by  the  direct  rays  oi 
the  sun,  or  by  direct  light  entering  from  a  window 
one  side  of  tliem  is  of  course  in  light,  the  other  in 
shade,  and  the  forms  in  the  mass  are  exhibited  sys- 
tematically by  tlie  force  of  the  rays  falling  on  it ; 
(those  having  n.ost  power  of  illumination  which  strike 
most  vertically) ;  and  note  that  there  is,  therefore,  to 
every  solid  curvature  of  surface,  a  necessarily  propor- 
tioned gradation  of  light,  the  gradation  on  a  parabolic 
solid  being  different  from  the  gradation  on  an  elliptical 
or  spherical  one.  Now,  when  your  purpose  is  to  represent 
and  learn  the  anatomy,  or  otherwise  characteristic  forms, 
of  any  object,  it  is  best  to  place  it  in  this  kind  of  direc-t 
light,  and  to  draw  it  as  it  is  seen  when  we  look  at  it 
in  a  direction  at  riglit  angles  to  that  of  the  ray.  This  is 
the  ordinary  academical  way  of  studying  form.  Lionardo 
seldom  practises  any  other  in  his  real  work,  though  lie 
directs  many  others  in  his  treatise. 

168.  The  great  importance  of  anatomical  knowledge 
to  the  painters  of  the  16th  century  rendered  this  method 
of  study  very  frerpicnt  with  them;  it  almost  wholly 
regulated  their  schools  of  engraving,  and  has  been  tli« 
most  frequent  system  of  drawing  in   art-schools  since  (t<! 


IdO  LIGHT. 

the  very  inexpedient  exclusion  of  otliers).  When  you 
study  objects  in  this  \va.y, — and  it  will  indeed  be  well  to 
do  so  often,  though  not  exclusively, — observe  always  one 
main  principle.  Divide  the  light  from  the  darkness 
frankly  at  first:  all  over  the  subject  let  there  be  no 
doubt  which  is  which.  Separate  them  one  from  the 
other  as  they  are  separated  in  the  moon,  or  on  the 
world  itself,  in  day  and  night.  Then  gradate  your 
lights  with  the  ntmost  snbtilty  possible  to  yon ;  but  let 
your  shadows  alone,  until  near  the  termination  of  the 
drawing:  then  put  quickly  into  them  Mdiat  farther 
energy  they  need,  thus  gaining  the  reflected  lig"'i':s  out 
of  their  original  fiat  gloom ;  but  generally  not  lo'  )king 
much  for  reflected  lights.  Nearly  all  young  students 
(and  too  many  ad\'anced  masters)  exaggerate  thoin.  It 
is  good  to  see  a  drawing  come  out  of  its  ground  b"ke 
a  vision  of  light  only  ;  the  shadows  lost,  or  disregarded 
in  the  \'ague  of  space.  In  vulgar  chiaroscuro  the  shadcF 
are  so  full  of  reflection  that  they  look  as  if  some  one 
had  been  walking  round  the  object  with  a  candle,  and 
the  studoit,  by  that  help,  peering  into  its  crannies. 

169.  II.  But,  in  the  reality  (^f  nature,  very  few  ol) 
jects  are  seen  in  this  accurately  lateral  manner,  or  lighted 
by  uncon fused  direct  rays.  Some  are  all  in  shadowj 
Bome  all  in  light,  some  near,  and  vigorously  defined; 
others  dim  and  faint  in  aerial  distance.  The  study  of 
tiiese  \arious  effects  and  forces  of  light,  which  we  may 
call  aerial  chiaroscuro,  is  a  far    more  subtle    one    thai 


LIGHT.  181 

that  of  the  i-ajs  exhibiting  organic  foira  (which  foi 
distinction's  sake  we  may  call  '  formal '  chiaroscuro), 
since  the  degrees  of  light  from  the  sun  itself  to  the 
blackness  of  night,  are  far  beyond  any  literal  imita- 
tion. In  order  to  produce  a  mental  impression  of  tho 
facts,  two  distinct  methods  may  be  followed : — the  fii-st, 
to  shade  downwards  from  the  lights,,making  everything 
darker  in  due  proportion,  until  the  scale  of  our  power 
being  ended,  the  mass  of  the  picture  is  lost  in  shade. 
The  second,  to  assume  the  points  of  extreme  darkness 
for  a  basis,  and  to  light  everything  above  these  in 
due  proportion,  till  the  mass  of  the  picture  is  lost  ir; 
light. 

17<>.  Thus,  in  Turner's  sepia  drawing  'Isis'  (Edu 
31),  he  begins  with  the  extreme  light  in  the  sky. 
and  shades  down  from  that  till  he  is  forced  to  repre- 
sent the  near  trees  and  pool  as  one  mass  of  black 
ness.  In  his  drawing  of  the  Greta  (S.  2),  he  begins 
with  the  dark  brown  shadow  of  the  bank  on  the  left, 
and  illuminates  up  from  that,  till,  in  his  distance, 
trees,  hills,  sk}-,  and  clouds,  are  all  lost  in  broad  light, 
BO  that  you  can  hardly  see  the  distinction  between 
hills  and  sky.  The  second  of  these  methods  is  in 
general  the  best  for  colour,  though  great  painters  unite 
hoth  in  their  practice,  according  to  the  character  of 
their  subject.  The  first  method  is  never  piu-sued  in 
colour  but  by  inferior  j)ainters.  It  is,  nevertheless,  of 
great  importance  to  make  studies  of  chiaroscuro  in  thia 


182  LIGHT. 

first  manner  for  some  time,  as  a  preparati<in  for  colour 
iiig;  and  this  for  many  reasons,  which  it  would  take 
too  long  to  state  now.  I  shall  expect  you  to  have  con- 
fidence in  me  when  I  assure  you  of  the  necessity  of  this 
Btudy,  and  ask  you  to  make  good  use  of  the  examples 
from  the  Liber  Studiorum  which  I  have  placed  in  your 
Educational  series. , 

lYl.  III.  Whether  in  formal  or  aerial  chiaroscuro, 
it  is  optional  with  the  student  to  make  the  local  coloui 
of  objects  a  part  of  his  shadow,  or  to  consider  the  high 
lights  of  every  colour^  as  white.  For  instance,  a  chiaro- 
scurist  of  Lionardo's  school,  dra^ving  a  leopard,  would 
take  no  notice  whatever  of  the  spots,  but  only  give  the 
shadows  which  expressed  the  anatomy.  And  it  is  indeed 
necessary  to  be  able  to  do  this,  and  to  make  drawings 
of  the  forms  of  things  as  if  they  were  sculptured,  and  had 
no  colour.  But  in  general,  and  more  especially  in  the 
practice  which  is  to  guide  ycni  to  colour,  it  is  better  to 
regard  the  local  colour  as  pai't  of  the  general  dark  and 
light  to  be  imitated ;  and,  as  I  told  you  at  first,  to  con- 
sider all  nature  merely  as  a  mosaic  of  different  colours,  to 
be  imitated  one  by  one  in  simplicity.  But  good  artists 
\'ary  their  methods  according  to  their  subject  and  material. 
In  general,  Diirer  takes  little  account  of  local  colour; 
but  in  woodcuts  of  armorial  bearings  (one  with  peacock's 
feathers  I  shall  get  for  you  some  day)  takes  great  delight 
in  it ;  while  one*  of  the  chief  merits  of  Bewick  is  the  ease 
a'ld  vigour  with  which  he  uses  his  black  a]id  white  for  the 


LIGHT.  183 

colours  of  plumes.  Also,  every  great  artist  looks  for,  and 
expresses,  that  character  of  his  subject  which  is  best  to  be 
rendered  by  the  instrument  in  his  hand,  and  th(i  material 
he  works  on.  Give  Yelasquez  or  Yeronese  a  leopard  to 
paint,  the  first  thing  they  think  of  will  be  its  spots  ;  give 
it  to  Diirer  to  engrave,  and  he  will  set  himself  at  the 
fur  and  whiskers ;  give  it  a  Greek  to  carve,  and  he  will 
only  think  of  its  jaws  and  limbs;  each  doing  what  is 
absolutely  best  with  the  means  at  his  disposal. 

172.  The  details  of  practice  in  these  various  methods 
I  will  endeavour  to  explain  to  you  by  distinct  examples  in 
your  Educational  series,  as  we  proceed  iij  our  work ;  for 
tl  e  present,  let  me,  in  closing,  recommend  to  you  once 
n.ore  with  great  earnestness  the  patient  endeaAour  to  ren- 
der the  chiaroscuro  of  landscape  in  the  manner  of  the  Liber 
Studiorum ;  and  this  the  rather,  because  you  might  easily 
suppose  that  the  facility  of  obtaining  photographs  which 
render  such  effects,  as  it  seems,  with  absolute  truth 
and  with  unapproachable  subtlety,  superseded  the  necessity 
of  stud}'^,  and  the  use  of  sketcliiug.  Let  me  assure  yoUj 
once  for  all,  that  photographs  supersede  no  single  quality 
nor  use  of  fine  art,  and  have  so  much  in  common  with 
Nature,  that  they  even  share  her  temper' of  parsimony, 
and  will  themselves  give  you  nothing  valuable  that  you 
do  not  work  for.  They  supersede  no  good  art,  for  the 
definition  of  art  is  'human  labour  regulated  by  human 
design,'  and  this  design,  or  evidence  of  active  intellect  in 
choice  and  arrangement,  is  the  essential  part  of  tlie  work : 


184  LIGHl. 

v^hiclij  so  long  as  you  cannot  perceive,  you  perceive  m 
art  whatsoever;  which,  when  once  you  do  perceive,  yon 
will  perceive  also  to  be  replaceable  by  no  mechanism. 
But,  farther,  photographs  will  give  you  nothing  you  do 
not  work  for.  They  are  invaluable  for  record  of  some 
kinds  of  facts,  and  for  giving  transcripts  of  drawings  by 
L;:reat  masters;  but  neither  in  the  photographed  scene, 
uor  photographed  drawing,  will  you  see  any  true  good, 
more  than  in  the  things  themselves,  until  yon  have  given 
the  appointed  price  in  your  own  attention  and  toil.  And 
when  once  you  have  paid  this  price,  you  will  not  care 
f (jr  photographs,  of  landscape.  Tliey  are  not  true,  though 
they  seem  so.  They  are  merely  spoiled  nature.  If  it 
is  not  human  design  you  are  looking  for,  there  is  more 
beauty  in  the  next  wayside  bank  than  in  all  the  sun- 
blackened  paper  you  could  collect  in  a  lifetime.  Go 
and  look  at  the  real  landscape,  and  take  care  of  it ;  do 
not  think  you  can  get  the  good  of  it  in  a  black  stain 
portable  in  a  folio.  But  if  you  care  for  human  thought 
and  passion,  then  learn  yourselves  to  watch  the  course 
and  fall  of  the  light  by  whose  influence  you  live,  and 
to  share  in  the  joy  of  human  spirits  in  the  heavenly 
gifts  of  sunbeam  and  shade.  For  I  tell  you  truly, 
that  to  a  quiet  heart,  and  healthy  brain,  and  industrious 
hand  there  is  more  delight,  and  use,  in  the  dappling  of  one 
wood-glade  with  flowers  and  sunshine,  than  to  the  rest- 
less, heartless,  and  idle  could  be  brought  by  a  panorama 
f)f  a  belt  of  the  world,  photographed  round  the  equator 


^tctnxt  "i 


COLOUR 


COLOUR. 

173.  To-day  I  must  try  to  complete  our  eiementai7 
sketch  of  schools  of  art,  by  tracing  the  course  of  those 
which  were  distinguished  by  faculty  of  colour,  and  after- 
wards to  deduce  from  the  entire  scheme  advisable  me- 
thods of  immediate  practice. 

You  remember  that,  for  the  type  of  the  early  schools 
of  colour,  I  chose  their  work  in  glass  ;  as  for  that  of  the 
early  schools  of  chiaroscuro,  I  chose  their  work  in  clay. 

I  had  two  reasons  for  this.  Fii-st,  that  the  peculiar 
skill  of  colourists  is  seen  most  intelligibly  in  their 
work  in  glass  or  in  enamel ;  secondly,  that  Nature 
herself  produces  all  her  loveliest  colours  in  some  kind 
of  solid  or  liquid  glass  or  crystal.  The  rainbow  is 
painted  on  a  shower  of  melted  glass,  and  the  colours 
of  the  opal  are  produced  in  ritreous  flint  mixed  with 
water;  the  green  and  blue,  and  golden  or  amber 
brown  of  flowing  water  is  in  surface  glossy,  and  in 
motion, '  splendidior  \'itro.'  And  the  loveliest  colours  ever 
granted  to  human  sight — those  of  morning  and  evening 
clouds  before  or  after  rain — are  produced  on  minute  par 


188  COLOUR. 

tides  of  finely-divided  water,  or  perhaps  sometimes,  ice 
But  more  than  this.  If  you  examine  with  a  lens  some 
of  the  richest  colours  of  flowers,  as,  for  instance,  those  oi 
the  gentian  and  dianthus,  you  will  find  their  texture  ia 
produced  by  a  crystalline  or  sugary  frost-work  upon 
them.  In  the  lychnis  of  the  high  Alps,  the  red  and 
white  have  a  kind  of  sugary  bloom,  as  rich  as  it  is 
delicate.  It  is  indescribable  ;  but  if  you  can  fancy  very 
powdery  and  crystalline  snow  mixed  with  the  softest 
cream,  and  then  dashed  with  carmine,  it  may  give  you 
some  idea  of  the  look  of  it.  There  are  no  colours,  either 
in  the  nacre  of  shells,  or  the  plumes  of  birds  and  insects, 
which  are  so  pure  as  those  of  clouds,  opal,  or  flowers ; 
but  the  force  of  purple  and  blue  in  some  butterflies,  and 
the  methods  of  clouding,  and  strength  of  burnished  lustre, 
in  plumage  like  the  peacock's,  give  them  more  universal 
interest;  in  some  birds,  also,  as  in  our  own  kingfisher, 
the  colour  nearly  reaches  a  floral  preciousness.  The  lustre 
in  most,  however,  is  metallic  rather  than  vitreous ;  and 
the  vitreous  always  gives  the  purest  hue.  Entirely  com- 
mon and  \ailgar  compared  with  these,  yet  to  be  noticed 
as  completing  the  crystalline  or  vitreous  system,  we  have 
the  colours  of  gems.  The  green  of  the  emerald  is  the 
best  of  these ;  but  at  its  best  is  as  vulgar  as  house 
fainting  beside  the  green  of  birds'  plumage  or  of  cleai 
water.  No  diamond  shows  colour  so  pure  as  a  dewdrop  ■, 
the  ruby  is  like  the  pink  of  an  ill-dyed  and  half -washed- 
out  print,  compared  to  the  diajithus;  and  the  carbuncle 


COLOUK.  189 

18  usually  quite  dead  unless  set  with  a  foil,  and  even  theo 
is  not  prettier  than  the  seed  of  a  pomegranate.  The  opal 
is,  however,  an  exception.  AVlien  pure  and  uncut  in  ita 
native  rock,  it  presents  the  most  lovely  colours  that  can 
be  seen  in  the  world,  except  those  of  clouds. 

We  have  thus  in  nature,  chiefly  obtained  by  crystalline 
conditions,  a  series  of  groups  of  entirely  delicious  hues ; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  best  signs  that  the  bodily  system 
is  in  a  healthy  state  when  we  can  see  these  clearly  in 
their  most  delicate  tints,  and  enjoy  them  fully  and  simply, 
with  the  kind  of  enjoyment  that  children  have  in  eating 
sweet  things.  I  shall  place  a  piece  of  rock  opal  on 
the  table  in  your  working  room:  if  on  fine  days  you 
will  sometimes  dip  it  in  water,  take  it  into  sunshine, 
and  examine  it  with  a  lens  of  moderate  power,  you  may 
always  test  your  progress  in  sensibility  to  colom-  by  the 
degree  of  pleasure  it  gives  you. 

174.  Now,  the  course  of  our  main  c(»l(»ur  schools  is 
briefly  this : — First,  we  have,  returning  tcj  cnir  hexagonal 
scheme,  line ;  then  sjpaces  filled  with  pure  colour ;  and 
then  masses  expressed  or  rounded  with  pure  colour.  And 
daring  these  two  stages  the  masters  of  colour  delight  in 
the  purest  tints,  and  endeavour  as  far  as  possible  to  rival 
those  of  opals  and  flowers.  In  saying  '  the  purest  tints,' 
1  do  not  mean  the  simplest  types  of  red,  blue,  and 
jrellow,  but  the  most  pure  tints  obtainable  by  their  com 
biuations. 

175      You  remember  I  told  you,  when  tlie  colouriata 


190  COLOTJE. 

painted  masses  or  projecting  spaces,  they,  aiming  alwaya 
at  colour,  perceived  from  the  first  and  held  to  the  lasl 
the  fact  that  shadows,  though  of  course  darker  than 
the  lights  with  reference  to  which  they  are  shadows, 
are  not  therefore  necessarily  less  vigorous  colours,  but 
perhaps  more  vigorous.  Some  of  the  most  beautiful  blues 
and  purples  in  nature,  for  instance,  are  those  of  moun- 
tains in  shadow  against  amber  sky ;  and  the  darkness  of 
the  hollow  in  the  centre  of  a  wild  rose  is  one  glow  of 
orange  fire,  owing  to  the  quantity  of  its  yellow  stamens. 
Well,  the  Venetians  always  saw  this,  and  all  great 
colourists  see  it,  and  are  thus  separated  from  the  non- 
colourists  or  schools  of  mere  chiaroscuro,  not  by.  difference 
in  style  merely  but  by  being  right  while  the  others  are 
wrong.  It  is  an  absolute  fact  that  shadows  are  as  much 
colours  as  lights  are;  and  whoever  represents  tliem  by 
merely,  the  subdued  or  darkened  tint  of  the  light,  repre- 
sents them  falsely.  I  particularly  ^vant  you  to  observe 
that  this  is  no  matter  of  taste,  but  fact.  If  you  are  es])e- 
cially  soberminded,  you  may  indeed  choose  sober  colours 
where  Venetians  would  have  chosen  gay  ones ;  that  is  a 
matter  of  taste :  you  may  thinlc  it  proper  for  a  hero  to 
wear  a  dress  without  patterns  on  it,  rather  than  an 
embroidered  one ;  that  is  similarly  a  matter  of  taste : 
but,  though  you  may  also  think  it  would  be  dignified 
for  a  hero's  limbs  to  be  all  black,  or  brown,  on  the 
shaded  side  of  them,  yet,  if  you  are  using  colour  at  all 
you  cannot  bo  have  him  to  your  mind,  except  by  falso 


OOLOUE.  191 

hood ;  he  never,  under  any  circumstances,  could  be  en 
tirely  black  or  brown  on  one  side  of  him. 

176.  In  this,  then,  the  Yenetians  are  separate  fi'om 
other  schools  by  rightness,  and  they  are  so  to  their  last 
days.  Venetian  painting  is  in  this  matter  always  right. 
But  also,  in  their  early  days,  the  colourists  are  separated 
from  other  schools  by  their  contentment  with  tranquil 
cheerfulness  of  light;  by  their  never  wanting  to  Ije 
dazzled.  None  of  their  lights  are  flashing  or  blinding : 
they  are  soft,  winning,  precious ;  lights  of  pearl,  not  of 
lime :  only,  you  know,  on  this  condition  they  cannot  have 
sunshine:  their  day  is  the  day  of  Paradise;  they  need 
no  candle,  neither  light  of  the  sun,  in  their  cities ;  and 
everything  is  seen  clear,  as  through  crystal,  far  or  near. 

This  holds  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Then 
they  begin  to  see  that  this,  beautiful  as  it  may  be,  is  still 
a  make-believe  light ;  that  we  do  not  live  in  the  inside 
of  a  pearl ;  but  in  an  atmosphere  through  which  a  burning 
sun  shines  thwartedly,  and  over  which  a  sorrowful  night 
must  far  prevail.  And  then  the  chiaroscurists  succeed 
in  persuading  them  of  the  fact  that  there  is  mystery 
in  the  day.  as  in  the  night,  and  show  them  how  constantly 
to  see  truly,  is  to  see  dimly.  And  also  they  teach  them 
the  brilliancy  of  light,  and  the  degree  in  which  it  is  raised 
from  the  darkness  ;  and,  instead  of  their  sweet  and  pearly 
peace,  tempt  them  to  look  for  the  strength  of  flame  and 
coruscation  of  lightning,  and  flash  of  sunshine  on  armoiu 
and  on  points  of  spears. 


192  COLOUE. 

177.  The  noble  painters  take  the  lesson  nobly,  alike  foi 
gloom  or  flame.  Titian  with  deliberate  strength,  Tintorel 
with  stormy  passion,  read  it,  side  by  side.  Titian  deepens 
the  hues  of  his  Assumption,  as  of  his  Entombment,  intc 
a  solemn  twilight ;  Tintoret  involves  his  earth  in  coils  of 
volcanic  cloud,  and  withdraws,  through  circle  flaming 
above  circle,  the  distant  light  of  Paradise.  Both  of  them, 
becoming  naturalist  and  human,  add  the  veracity  oi 
Holbein's  intense  portraiture  to  the  glow  and  the  dignity 
they  had  themselves  inherited  from  the  Masters  of  Peace : 
at  the  same  moment  another,  as  strong  as  they,  and  in 
pure  felicity  of  art-faculty,  even  greater  than  they,  but 
trained  in  a  lower  school, — Yelasquez, — produced,  the  mira- 
cles of  colour  and  shadow-painting,  which  made  Reynolds 
say  of  him,  *  What  we  all  do  with  labour,  he  does  with 
ease ; '  and  one  more,  Correggio,  uniting  the  sensual 
element  of  the  Greek  schools  with  their  gloom,  and 
their  light  with  their  beauty,  and  all  these  with  the 
Lombardic  colour,  became,  as  since  I  think  it  has  been 
admitted  without  question,  the  captain  of  the  painter's 
art  as  such.  Other  men  have  nobler  or  more  numerous 
gifts,  but  as  a  painter,  master  of  the  art  of  laying  coloui 
BO  as  to  be  lovely,  Correggio  is  alone. 

178.  I  said  the  noble  men  leamt  their  lesson  nobl}'. 
The  base  men  also,  and  necessarily,  learn  it  basely.  The 
great  men  rise  from  colour  to  sunlight.  The  base  ones 
fall  from  colour  to  candlelight.  To-day, '  non  ragioniam 
di  lor,'  but  let  us  see  what  this  great  change  which  perfects 


COLOTJR.  193 

tlie  art  of  painting  mainly  consists  in,  and  means.  For 
though  we  are  only  at  present  speaking  of  technical 
matters,  every  one   of   them,  I  can   scarcely  too   often 

-repeat,  is  the  outcome  and  sign  of  a  mental  character, 
and  you  can  only  understand  the  folds  of  the  ve!l,  by 

.those  of  the  form  it  veils. 

*     179.     The  complete   painters,  we  find,  have   brought 

dimness    and   mystery  into  their  method   of    colouring. 

That  means  that  the  world  all  round  them  has  resolved 

to  dream,  or  to  believe,  no  more ;    but  to  know,  and  to 

Bee.     And  instantly  all  knowledge  and  sight  are  given,  no 

more  as  in  the  Gothic  times,  through  a  window  of  glass, 

brightly,  but  as  through  a  telescope-glass,  darkly.     Your 

cathedral  window    shut    you   from    the   true    sky,    and 

illumined  you  with  a  \-i8ion ;    your  telescope  leads  you 

to  the   sky,  but   darkens   its   light,   and   reveals  nebula 

beyond  nebula,  far  and  farther,  and"  to  no  conceivable 

farthest — unresolvable.     That  is  what  the  mystery  means. 

180.     Next,  what  does  that  Greek  opposition  of  black 

and  white  mean? 

In  the  sweet  crj'stalline  time  of  colour,  the  painters, 

whether  on  glass  or  canvas,  employed   intricate  patterns, 

in  order  to  mingle  hues  beautifully  with  each  other,  and 

make  one  perfect  melody  of  them  all.     But  in  the  great 

naturalist   school,   they   like    their  patterns  to   come   in 

the   Greek  way,  dashed  dark  on  light, — gleaming  light 

out   of   dark.     That  means   also  that  the  world   round 

them   has  again  returned  to  the  Greek  conviction,  that 
9 


194  OOLOUE. 

all  nature,  especially  human  nature,  is  not  entirely  melo 
dious  nor  luminous;  but  a  barred  and  broken  thing: 
that  saints  have  their  foibles,  sinners  their  forces ;  that 
the  most  luminous  virtue  is  often  only  a  flash,  and  the 
blackest-looking  fault  is  sometimes  only  a  stain :  and, 
without  confusing  in  the  least  black  with  white,  they 
can  forgive,  or  even  take  delight  in  things  that  are  like 
the  »ej3^<,  dappled. 

181.  You  have  then — first,  mystery.  Secondly,  oppo- 
sition of  dark  and  light.  Then,  lastly,  wliatever  truth  of 
form  the  dark  and  light  can  show. 

That  is  to  say,  truth  altogether,  and  resignation  to 
it,  and  quiet  resolve  to  make  the  best  of  it.  And  therefore, 
portraiture  of  living  men,  women,  and  children, — no  more 
of  saints,  cherubs,  or  demons.  So  here  I  have  brought 
for  your  standards  of  perfect  art,  a  little  maiden  of  the 
Strozzi  family,  with  her  dog,  by  Titian;  and  a  little 
princess  of  the  house  of  Savoy,  by  Yandyke  ;  and  Charles 
the  Fifth,  by  Titian ;  and  a  queen,  by  Yelasquez ;  and 
an  English  girl  in  a  brocaded  gown,  by  Eeynolds ;  and 
an  English  physician  in  his  plain  coat,  and  wig,  by 
Keynolds:  and  if  you  do  not  like  them,  I  cannot  help 
myself,  for  I  can  find  nothing  better  for  jou. 

182.  Better? — I  must  pause  at  the  word.  Nothing 
stronger,  certainly,  nor  so  strong.  Nothing  so  wonderful 
so  inimitable,  so  keen  in  unprejudiced  and  unbiassed 
sight. 

Yet  better,   perhaps,   the   sight  that  was  guided  by 


COLOUE.  195 

a  sacred  will ;  the  power  that  could  be  taught  to  weakei 
hands;  the  work  that  was  faultless,  though  not  inimi- 
table, bright  with  felicity  of  heart,  and  consummate 
in  a  disciplined  and  companionable  skill.  You  will 
find,  when  I  can  place  in  your  hands  the  notes  on 
Verona,  which  I  read  at  the  Royal  Institution,  that  I 
have  ventured  to  call  the  sera  of  painting  represented 
hy  John  BeUini,  the  time  'of  the  Masters.'  Truly 
they  deserved  the  name,  who  did  nothing  but  what 
vvas  lovely,  and  taught  only  what  was  right.  These 
mightier,  who  succeeded  them,  crowned,  but  closed,  the 
dynasties  of  art,  and  since  their  day  painting  has  never 
flourished  more. 

183.  There  were  many  reasons  for  this,  without  fault 
of  theirs.  They  were  exponents,  in  the  first  place,  of  the 
change  in  all  men's  minds  from  civil  and  religious 
to  merely  domestic  passion ;  the  love  of  their  gods  and 
their  country  had  contracted  itself  now  into  that  of  their 
domestic  circle,  which  was  little  more  than  the  halo  of 
themselves.  You  will  see  the  reflection  of  this  chantre 
in  painting  at  once  by  comparing  the  two  Madonnas 
(S.  37,  John  Bellini's,  and  Raphael's,  called  '  della  Seg- 
giola  ').  Bellini's  Madonna  cares  for  all  creatures  through 
her  child ;  Raphael's,  for  1  er  child  only. 

Again,  the  world  round  these  painters  had  become 
Bad  and  proud,  instead  of  happy  and  humble ; — ita 
d(jmestic  peace  was  darkened  by  irreligioii,  and  made 
restless  l)y  pride.     And    tlie    llyiuen,  whose    stiituc    this 


196  coLotm. 

fair  English  girl  of  Eeynolds'  thought  must  decorate 
(S.  43),  is  blind,  and  holds  a  coronet. 

Again,  in  the  splendid  power  of  realization,  whioh 
tliese  greatest  of  artists  had  reached,  there  was  the  latent 
possibility  of  amusement  by  deception,  and  of  excitement 
by  sensualism.  And  Dutch  trickeries  of  base  resem- 
blance, and  French  and  English  fancies  of  insidious 
beauty,  soon  occupied  the  eyes  of  the  populace  of  Europe, 
too  restless  and  wretched  now  to  care  for  the  sweet  earth- 
berries  and  Madonna's  ivy  of  Cima,  and  too  ignoble  to 
perceive  Titian's  colour,  or  Correggio's  shade. 

184.  Enough  sources  of  evil  were  here,  in  the  temper 
and  power  of  the  consummate  art.  In  its  practical 
methods  there  was  another,  the  fatallest  of  all.  These 
great  artists  brought  with  them  mystery,  despondency, 
domesticity,  sensuality:  of  all  these,  good  came,  as 
well  as  evil.  One  thing  more  they  brought,  of  which 
nothing  but  evil  ever  comes,  or  can  come — Liberty. 

By  the  discipline  of  five  hundred  years  they  had 
learned  and  inherited  such  power,  that  whereas  all 
former  painters  could  be  right  only  by  effort,  they 
could  be  right  with  ease  ;  and  whereas  all  former  paint- 
ers could  be  right  only  under  restraint,  they  could  be 
right,  free.  Tintoret's  touch,  Luini's,  Correggio's,  Eey- 
nolds', and  Yelasquez's,  are  all  as  free  as  the  air,  and 
yet  right.  '  How  very  fine ! '  said  everybody.  Unquestion- 
ably, Aery  fine.  Next,  said  everybody,  'What  a  grand 
discovery  I     Here  is  the  finest  work  ever  done,  and  it  ii 


COLOUB.  197 

^uite  free.  Let  us  all  be  free  then,  and  what  fine 
things  sliall  we  not  do  also ! '  AVith  what  results  we  too 
well  know. 

Nevertheless,  remember  you  are  to  delisjht  in  the  free 
dom  won  by  these  mighty  men  through  obedience,  thougli 
you  are  not  to  covet  it.  Obey,  and  you  also  shall  be  free 
in  time ;  but  in  these  minor  things,  as  well  as  in  great, 
it  is  only  right  service  which  is  perfect  freedom. 

185.  This,  broadly,  is  the  history  of  the  early  and 
late  colour-schools.  The  first  of  these  I  shall  call  gene- 
rally, henceforward,  the  school  of  crystal ;  the  other  that 
of  clay :  potter's  clay,  or  human,  are  too  sorrowfully  the 
same,  as  far  as  art  is  concerned.  No^v  remember,  in 
practice,  you  cannot  follow  both  these  schools ;  you  must 
distinctly  adopt  the  principles  of  one  or  the  other.  I  will 
put  the  means  of  following  either  within  your  reach  ;  and 
according  to  your  dispositions  you  will  choose  one  or  the 
other:  all  I  have  to  guard  you  against  is  the  mistake 
of  thinking  you  can  unite  the  two.  If  you  want  to 
paint  (even  in  the  most  distant  and  feeble  way)  in  the 
(rYGek  school,  the  school  of  Lionardo,  Correggio,  and 
Turner,  you  cannot  design  coloured  windows,  nor  An- 
gelican  paradises.  If,  on  the  otluT  hand,  you  choose  to 
live  in  the  peace  of  paradise,  you  cannot  share  in  the 
gloomy  triumphs  of  the  earth. 

186.  And,  incidentally  note,  as  a  practical  matter  ol 
immediate  importance,  that  painted  windows  have  ixjthing 
to   do  with   chiaroscuro.     The  \irtiic   of  glass   is  to  be 


198  OOLOUB. 

transparent  everywhere.      If  you  care  to  build  a  palace 

of  jewels,  painted  glass  is  richer  than  all  the  treasures 
of  Aladdin's  lamp ;  but  if  you  like  pictures  better  than 
jewels,  you  must  come  into  broad  daylight  to  paint 
them.  A  picture  in  coloured  glass  is  one  of  the  most 
vulgar  of  barbarisms,  and  only  fit  to  be  ranked  with 
the  gauze  transparencies  and  chemical  illuminations  of 
the  sensational  stage.  Also,  put  out  of  your  minds  at 
once  all  question  about  difficulty  of  getting  colour ;  in 
glass  we  have  all  the  colours  that  ai'e  wanted,  only  we 
do  not  know  either  how  to  choose,  or  how  to  connect 
them ;  and  we  are  always  trying  to  get  them  bright, 
when  their  real  virtue  is  to  be  deep,  and  tender,  and 
subdued.  We  will  have  a  thorough  study  of  painted 
glass  soon:  meanwhile  I  merely  give  you  a  type  of  its 
perfect  style,  in  two  windows  from  Chalons  sur  Marne 
(S.  141). 

187.  1:  ou  will  have  then  to  choose  between  these  twc 
modes  of  thought :  for  my  own  part,  with  what  poor  gift 
and  skill  is  in  me,  I  belong  wholly  to  the  chiaroscurist 
Bchool ;  and  shall  teach  you  therefore  chiefly  that  which 
I  am  best  able  to  teach :  and  the  rather,  that  it  is  only 
IE  this  school  that  you  can  follow  out  the  study  either 
of  natural  history  or  landscape.  The  form  of  a  wild 
animal,  or  the  wrath  of  a  mountain  torrent,  would  both 
be  revolting  (or  in  a  certain  sense  invisible)  to  the  calm 
fantasy  of  a  painter  in  the  schools  of  crystal.  He  must 
lay  his  lion  asleep  in  St.  Jerome's  study  beside  his  tame 


jOLoint  1 99 

partridge  and  spare  slippers;  lead  the  appeased  risei 
by  alternate  azure  promontories,  and  restrain  its  courtly 
little  streamlets  with  margins  of  marble.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  your  studies  of  mythology  and  literature 
may  best  be  connected  with  these  schools  of  purest  and 
calmest  imagination ;  and  their  discipline  will  be  useful 
to  you  in  yet  another  direction,  and  that  a  very  important 
one.  It  will  teach  you  to  take  delight  in  little  tilings, 
and  develope  in  you  the  joy  which  all  men  should  fee) 
in  purity  and  order,  not  only  in  pictures  but  in  reality. 
For,  indeed,  the  best  art  of  this  school  of  fantasy  may 
at  last  be  in  reality,  and  the  chiaroscurists,  true  in  ideal, 
may  be  less  helpful  in  act.  We  cannot  arrest  sunsets 
nor  cai-ve  mountains,  but  we  may  turn  every  English 
homestead,  if  we  choose,  into  a  picture  by  Cima  or  John 
Bellini,  which  shall  be  '  no  counterfeit,  but  the  true  and 
perfect  image  of  life  indeed.' 

188.  For  the  present,  however,  and  yet  for  some  litth 
time  during  your  progress,  you  will  not  have  to  choose 
your  school.  For  both,  as  we  have  seen,  begin  in  de- 
lineation, and  both  proceed  by  filling  flat  spaces  with  an 
even  tint.  And  therefore  this  will  be  the  course  of  work 
for  you,  founded  on  all  that  we  have  seen. 

Ha^^ng  learned  to  measure,  and  draw  a  pen  line  with 
Bome  steadiness  (the  geometrical  exercises  for  this  purpose 
being  properly  school,  not  University  work),  you  shall 
have  a  series  of  studies  from  the  plants  which  are  of  chief 
importance   in  the  history  of   art;  first  from  their  rea/ 


200  COLOUR. 

forms,  and  then  from  the  conventional  and  heraldic  ex 
pressions  of  them ;  tlien  we  will  take  examples  of  the 
tilling  of  ornamental  forms  with  flat  colour  in  Egyptian, 
Greek,  and  Gothic  design ;  and  then  we  will  advance  tc 
animal  forms  treated  in  the  same  severe  way,  and  so  to 
the  patterns  and  colour  designs  on  animals  themselves. 
And  when  we  are  sure  of  our  firmness  of  hand  and 
accuracy  of  eye,  we  will  go  on  into  light  and  shade, 

189.  In  process  of  time,  these  series  of  exercises  will, 
I  hope,  be  sufficiently  complete  and  systematic  to  show 
its  purpose  at  a  glance.  But  during  the  present  year, 
I  shall  content  myself  with  placing  a  few  examples  oJ 
these  different  kinds  of  practice  in  your  rooms  for  work, 
explaining  in  the  catalogue  the  position  they  will  ulti- 
mately occupy,  and  the  technical  points  of  process  into 
which  it  is  of  no  use  to  enter  in  a  general  lecture.  After 
a  Kttle  time  spent  in  copying  these,  your  own  predilec- 
tions must  determine  your  future  course  of  study ;  only 
remember,  whatever  school  you  follow,  it  must  be  only  tc 
learn  method,  not  to  imitate  result,  and  to  acquaint  your- 
self with  the  minds  of  other  men,  but  not  to  adopt  them 
as  your  own.  Be  assured  that  no  good  can  come  of  your 
work  but  as  it  arises  simply  out  of  your  own  true  naturefc 
and  the  necessities  of  the  time  around  you,  though  in 
many  respects  an  evil  one.  You  live  in  'an  age  of  base 
conceit  and  baser  servility — an  age  whose  intellect  ia 
chiefly  formed  by  pillage  and  occupied  in  desecration ; 
one  day  mimicking,  the  next  destroying,  the  works  of  al] 


CX)L01IK.  20i 

the  noble  persons  who  made  its  intellectual  or  art  life 
possible  to  it : — an  age  without  honest  confidence  enough 
in  itself  to  carve  a  cherry-stone  with  an  original  fancy 
but  with  insolence  enough  to  abolish  the  solar  system,  ii 
it  were  allowed  to  meddle  with  it.  In  the  midst  of  all 
this,  you  have  to  become  lowly  and  strong ;  to  recognise 
the  powers  of  others  and  to  fulfil  your  own.  I  shalJ  try 
to  bring  before  you  every  form  of  ancient  art,  that  you 
may  read  and  profit  by  it,  not  imitate  it.  You  shall 
draw  Egyptian  kings  dressed  in  colours  like  fcl^e  rainbow, 
and  Doric  gods,  and  Runic  monsters,  and  Gothic  monks — 
not  that  you  may  draw  like  Egyptians  or  JS'orsemen,  nor 
yield  yourselves  passively  to  be  bound  by  the  devotion 
or  infected  with  the  delirium  of  the  past,  but  that  you 
may  know  truly  what  other  men  have  felt  during  their 
poor  span  of  life ;  and  open  your  own  hearts  to  what  the 
heavens  and  earth  may  have  to  tell  you  in  yours. 

Do  not  be  surprised,  therefore,  nor  provoked,  if  I  give 
you  at  first  sti-ange  things,  and  rude,  to  draw.  As  soon 
as  you  try  them,  you  will  find  they  are  difficult  enough, 
yet,  with  care,  entu-ely  possible.  As  you  go  on  drawing 
them  they  will  become  interesting,  and,  as  soon  as  you 
imderstand  them,  you  will  be  on  the  way  to  undei-stand 
yourselves  also. 

190.    In  closing  this  fii-st  course  of  lectures,  I  have  (»ne 

word  more  to  say  respecting  the  possible  consequence  of  the 

introduction  of  art  among  the  studies  of  the  Univei-sity. 

What  art  may   do  for   scholai-ship,   I   have  no   liglit   to 
9* 


202  UOLOTJK. 

conjecture ;  but  what  scholarship  may  do  for  art,  I  maj 
in  all  modesty  tell  you.  Hitherto,  great  artists,  though 
always  gentlemen,  have  yet  been  too  exclusively  crafts- 
men. Art  has  been  less  thoughtful  than  we  suppose ;  it 
has  taught  much,  but  much,  also,  falsely.  Many  of  the 
greatest  pictures  are  enigmas;  others,  beautiful  toys; 
others,  harmful  and  corrupting  toys.  In  the  loveliest 
there  is  something  weak ;  in  the  greatest  there  is  something 
guilty.  And  this,  gentlemen,  if  you  will,  is  the  new  thing 
that  may  come  to  pass, — that  the  scholars  of  England  may 
resolve  to  teach  also  with  the  silent  power  of  the  arts ; 
and  that  some  among  you  may  so  learn  and  use  them,  that 
pictm*es  may  be  painted  which  shall  not  be  enigmas  any 
more,  but  open  teachings  of  what  can  no  otherwise  be 
so  well  shown;  which  shall  not  be  fevered  or  broken 
visions  any  more,  but  shall  be  filled  with  the  indwelling 
light  of  self-possessed  imagination ;  which  shall  not  be 
stained  or  enfeebled  any  more  by  evil  passion,  but  glorious 
with  the  strength  and  chastity  of  noble  human  love ;  and 
which  shall  no  more  degrade  or  disguise  the  work  of  God 
in  heaven,  but  testify  of  Him  as  here  dwelling  with 
men,  and  walking  with  them,  not  angry,  in  the  garden 
of  the  earth. 


THE  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  OF  iUT 


THE 

POLITICAL   ECONOMY 
OF  ART: 

OK, 

"A    JOY   FOREVER" 

(AND  ITS  PRICE  IN  THE  MARKET). 


BEING  THE  SUBSTANCE  (WITH  ADDITIONS)  OF  TWO 

LECTURES  DELIVERED  AT  MANCHESTER 

JULY  10th  and  13Tn,  1857. 

BY 

JOHN     RUSKIN,     M.A., 

AUTHOR  OP    "modern   rXINTEUg,"     "  KLEMENT9  OP    DHAWING,"   "  LECTUKBS 
ON   ARCHITECTURE   AND   TAINTING,"    ETC.,    ETC. 


**  A  thing  of  beauty  Is  a  joy  forever."— Kkats. 


NEW   YORK: 

JOHN    WILEY   AND   SONS, 

53  E\ST  Tenth  Stheet, 

i>ecoD(l  iloor  wc^l  of  Broadway. 

1891. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGH 

Peeface t        .        7 

Lecture  1 11 

The  Discovery  and  Application  of  Art. 

A  Lecture  delivered  at  Manchester,  July  10,  1857. 

Lecture  II 50 

The  Accumulation  and  Distribution  of  Art. 

Continuation  of  the  previous  Lecture  ;  delivered  July  13,  1857. 


Addenda 

Note  1.— "Fatherly  Authority" 

"  2. — "  Right  to  Public  Support ' 

"  3.—"  Trial  Schools  " 

"  4.—"  Public  Favour " 

"  5. — "  Invention  of  New  Wants 

"  6. — "  Economy  of  Literature"  , 

"  7.— "Pilots  of  the  State" 

"  8.—"  Silk  and  Purple  "     . 


95 
99 
104 
110 
111 
113 
115 
116 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ADDITIONAL  PAPERS. 

Education  in  Art 125 

Art  School  Notes 134 

Social  Policy 140 


PREFACE. 


The  title  of  this  book, — or,  more  accurately,  of  its  subjects ; 
— for  no  author  was  ever  less  likely  than  I  have  lately  become, 
to  hope  for  perennial  pleasure  to  his  readers  from  what  has 
cost  himself  the  most  pains, — will  be,  perhaps,  recoguized  by 
some  as  the  last  clause  of  the  line  chosen  from  Keats  by  the 
good  folks  of  Manchester,  to  be  written  in  letters  of  gold  on 
the  cornice,  or  Holy  rood,  of  the  great  Exhibition  which  in- 
augurated the  career  of  so  many, — since  organized,  by  both 
foreign  governments  and  our  own,  to  encourage  the  produc- 
tion of  works  of  art,  which  the  producing  nations,  so  far 
from  intending  to  be  their  "joy  for  ever,"  only  hope  to  sell 
as  soon  as  possible.  Yet  the  motto  was  chosen  with  uncom- 
prehended  felicity  :  for  there  never  was,  nor  can  be,  any  es- 
sential beauty  possessed  by  a  work  of  art,  which  is  not  based 
on  the  conception  of  its  honoured  permanence,  and  local  in- 
fluence, as  a  part  of  appointed  and  precious  furniture,  either 
in  the  cathedral,  the  house,  or  the  joyful  thoroughfare,  of 
nations  which  enter  their  gates  with  thanksgiving,  and  their 
courts  with  praise. 


"Their"  courts — or  "His"  courts; — in  the  mind  of  such 
races,  the  expressions  are  synonymous :  and  the  habits  of 
life  which  recognise  the  delightfulness,  confess  also  the  sa- 
credness,  of  homes  nested  round  the  seat  of  a  worship  un- 
shaken by  insolent  theory  :  themselves  founded  on  an  abiding 
aifection  for  the  past,  and  care  for  the  future ;  and  approached 
by  paths  open  only  to  the  activities  of  honesty,  and  traversed 
only  by  the  footsteps  of  peace. 

The  exposition  of  these  truths,  to  which  I  have  given  the 
chief  energy  of  my  own  life,  will  be  found  in  the  following 
pages  first  undertaken  systematically  and  in  logical  sequence ; 
and  what  I  have  since  written  on  the  political  influence  of  the 
Arts  has  been  little  more,  than  the  expansion  of  these  first 
lectures,  in  the  reprint  of  which  not  a  sentence  is  o"mitted  or 
changed. 

The  supplementary  papers  added  contain,  in  briefest  form, 
the  aphorisms  respecting  principles  of  art-teaching  of  which 
the  attention  I  gave  to  this  subject  during  the  continuance 
of  my  Professorship  at  Oxford  confirms  me  in  the  earnest  and 
contented  re-assertion. 

John  Ruskin. 

Beantwood,  April  29th,  1880. 


PREFACE 


Tinn  greater  part  of  the  following  treatise  remains  m  the  axaci 
form  in  which  it  was  read  at  Manchester ;  but  the  more  familial 
passages  of  it,  which  were  trusted  to  extempore  delivery,  have  been 
since  written  with  greater  explicitness  and  fulness  than  I  could 
give  them  in  speaking ;  and  a  considerable  number  of  notes  are 
added,  to  explain  the  points  which  could  not  be  sufficiently  con- 
sidered in  the  time  I  had  at  my  disposal  in  the  lecture-room. 

Some  apology  may  be  thought  due  to  the  reader,  for  an  en- 
deavour to  engage  his  attention  on  a  subject  of  which  no  profound 
study  seems  compatible  with  the  work  in  which  I  am  usually  em- 
ployed. But  profound  study  is  not,  in  this  case,  necessary  either 
to  writer  or  reader,  while  accurate  study,  up  to  a  certain  point,  is 
lecessary  for  us  all.  Political  economy  means,  in  plain  English, 
nothing  more  than  "  citizens' economy ;"  and  its  first  principles 
ought,  therefore,  to  be  understood  by  all  who  mean  to  take  the 
responsibility  of  citizens,  as  those  of  household  economy  by  all 
who  take  the  responsibility  of  householders.  Nor  are  its  first 
principles  in  the  least  obscure :  they  are,  many  of  them,  disagreeable 


1^111  PREFACE. 

in  their  practical  requirements,  and  people  m  general  pretend  that 
they  cannot  understand,  because  they  are  unwilling  to  obey  them ; 
or  rather,  by  habitual  disobedience,  destroy  their  capacity  of  un- 
derstanding them.  But  th^re  is  not  one  of  the  really  great  prin- 
ciples of  the  science  which  is  either  obscure  or  disputable — which 
might  not  be  taught  to  a  youth  as  soon  as  he  can  be  trusted  with 
an  annual  allowance,  or  to  a  young  lady  as  soon  as  she  is  of  age  to 
be  taken  into  counsel  by  the  housekeeper. 

I  might,  with  more  appearance  of  justice,  be  blamed  for  think 
ing  it  necessary  to  enforce  what  everybody  is  supposed  to  know. 
But  this  fault  will  hardly  be  found  with  me,  while  the  commercial 
events  recorded  daily  in  our  journals,  and  still  more  the  explana- 
tions attempted  to  be  given  of  them,  show  that  a  large  number  ol 
our  so-called  merchants  are  as  ignorant  of  the  nature  of  money  as 
they  are  reckless,  unjust,  and  unfortunate  in  its  employment. 

The  statements  of  economical  principle  given  in  the  text,  though 
I  know  that  most,  if  not  all,  of  them  are  accepted  by  existing  au- 
thorities on  the  science,  are  not  supported  by  references,  because  1 
have  never  read  any  author  on  political  economy,  except  Adam 
Smith,  twenty  years  ago.  Whenever  I  have  taken  up  any  modern 
book  upon  this  subject,  I  have  usually  found  it  encumbered  with 
inquiiies  into  accidental  or  minor  commercial  results,  for  the  pursuit 
af  which  an  ordinary  reader  could  have  no  leisure,  and,  by  the 
complication  of  which,  it  seemed  to  me,  the  authors  themselves  had 
been  not  unfrequently  prevented  from  seeing  to  the  root  of  the 
business. 


PREFACE.  IX 

Fiually,  if  the  reader  should  feel  inclined  to  blame  me  for  too 
anguine  a  statement  of  future  possibilities  in  political  practice,  let 
him  consider  how  absurd  it  would  have  appeared  in  the  days  oi 
Edward  I.  if  the  present  state  of  social  economy  had  been  thee 
predicted  as  necessary,  or  even  described  as  possible.  And  I  be- 
lieve the  advance  from  the  days  of  Edward  I.  to  our  own,  great  aa 
it  is  confessedly,  consists,  not  so  much  m  what  we  have  actually 
accomplished,  as  in  what  we  are  now  enabled  lo  conoeive. 


POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 


LECTURE  I. 


Among  the  various  characteristics  of  the  age  in  which  wo  live, 
as  compared  with  other  ages  of  this  not  yet  very  experienced 
world,  one  of  the  most  notable  appears  to  me  to  be  the  just 
and  wholesome  contempt  in  which  we  hold  poverty.  I  repeat,  the 
just  and  wholesome  contempt;  though  I  see  that  some  of  my  hear- 
ers look  suiprised  at  the  expression.  I  assure  them,  I  use  it  in 
sincerity;  and  I  should  not  have  ventured  to  ask  you  to  listen 
to  me  this  evening,  unless  I  had  entertained  a  profound  respect 
for  wealth — true  wealth,  that  is  to  say;  for,  of  course,  we  ought 
to  respect  neither  wealth  nor  anything  else  that  is  false  of  its 
kind:  and  the  distinction  between  real  and  false  wealth  is  one 
of  the  points  on  which  I  shall  have  a  few  words  presently  to 
say  to  you.  But  true  wealth  I  hold,  as  I  said,  in  great  honour ; 
and  sympathize,  for  the  most  part,  with  that  extraordinary  feel- 
ing of  the  present  age  which  publicly  pays  this  honour  to  riches. 
!  cannot,  however,  help  noticing  how  extraordinary  it  is,  and  how 
Ihis  epoch  of  ours  differs  from  all  bygone  epochs  in  having  no 
philosophical  nor  religious  worshippers  of  the  ragged  godship  of 
poverty.  In  the  classical  ages,  not  only  were  there  people  who 
vo'untarily  lived  in  tubs,  and  who  used  gravely  to  maintain  the 
superiority  of   tub-life  to    town-life,  but   the  Greeks  and    LatinK 


12  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.  I 

Bccm  to  have  looked  on  these  eccentric,  and  I  do  not.  scruplp, 
to  say,  absurd  people,  with  as  much  respect  as  we  do  upon  large 
capitalists  and  landed  proprietors;  so  that  really,  iu  those  days,  no 
one  could  be  described  as  purse  proud,  but  only  as  empty -purse 
proud.  And  no  less  distinct  than  the  honour  which  those  curious 
Greek  people  pay  to  their  conceited  poor,  is  the  disrespectful  man- 
ner in  which  they  speak  of  the  rich ;  so  that  one  cannot  listen 
long  either  to  them,  or  to  the  Roman  writers  who  imitated  them, 
without  finding  oneseM"  entangled  in  all  sorts  of  plausible  absurdi- 
ties ;  hard  upon  being  convinced  of  the  uselessness  of  collecting 
that  heavy  yellow  substance  which  we  call  gold,  and  led  generally 
to  doubt  all  the  most  established  maxims  of  political  economy.  Noi 
are  matters  much  better  in  the  middle  ages.  For  the  Greeks  and 
Romans  contented  themselves  with  mocking  at  rich  people,  and 
constructing  merry  dialogues  between  Charon  and  Diogenes  or 
Menippus,  in  which  the  ferrymen  and  the  cynic  rejoiced  together 
as  they  saw  kings  and  rich  men  coming  down  to  the  shore  of 
Acheron,  in  lamenting  and  lamentable  crowds,  casting  their 
crowns  into  the  dark  waters,  and  searching,  sometimes  in  vain,  foi 
the  last  coin  out  of  all  their  treasures  that  could  ever  be  of  use  to 
them.  But  these  Pagan  views  of  the  matter  were  indulgent, 
compared  with  those  which  were  held  in  the  middle  ages^ 
when  wealth  seems  to  have  been  looked  upon  by  the  best  of  men 
not  only  as  contemptible,  but  as  criminal.  The  purse  round  the 
neck  is,  then,  one  of  the  principal  signs  of  condemnation  in  the 
pictured  inferno;  and  the  Spirit  of  Poverty  is  reverenced  with 
subjection  of  heart,  and  faithfulness  of  affection,  like  that  of  a 
loyal  knight  for  his  lady,  or  a  loyal  subject  for  his  queen. 
And  truly,  it  requires  some  boldness  to  quit  ourselves  of  these 
feelings,  and  to  confess  their  partiality  or  their  error,  which, 
nevertheless,  we  are  certainly  bound  to  do.  Fjp  wealth  is  simply 
one  of  the  greatest  powers  which  can  be  entrusted  to  human 
hands;   a  power,   not  indeed  to   be   envied,  because   it  seldom 


LECT.    I.]  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  13 

makes  us  liappy ;  but  still  less  to  be  abdicated  or  despi&ed 
while,  in  these  days,  and  in  this  country,  it  has  become  a 
[)Ower  all  the  more  notable,  in  that  the  possessions  of  a  rich  man 
are  not  represented,  as  they  used  to  be,  by  wedges  of  gold  oi 
coflFers  of  jewels,  but  by  masses  of  men  variously  employed,  ovei 
whose  bodies  and  minds  the  wealth,  according  to  its  direction, 
exercises  harmful  or  helpful  influence,  and  becomes,  in  that  altei 
native,  Mammon  either  of  Unrighteousness  or  of  Righteousness. 

Now,  it  seemed  to  me  that  since,  in  the  name  you  have  given 
to  this  great  gathering  of  British  pictures,  you  recognise  them  a? 
Treasures — that  is,  I  suppose,  as  part  and  parcel  of  the  real  wealth 
of  the  country — you  might  not  be  uninterested  in  tracing  certain 
r»ommercial  questions  connected  with  this  particular  form  of 
wealth.  Most  persons  express  themselves  as  surprised  at  its 
quantity ;  not  having  known  before  to  what  an  extent  good  art 
had  been  accumulated  in  England :  and  it  will,  therefore,  I  should 
think,  be  held  a  worthy  subject  of  consideration,  what  are  the 
political  interests  involved  in  such  accumulations ;  what  kind  of 
labour  they  represent,  and  how  this  labour  may  in  general  be 
applied  and  economized,  so  as  to  produce  the  richest  results. 

Now,  you  must  have  patience  with  me,  if  in  approaching  the 
specialty  of  this  subject,  I  dwell  a  little  on  certain  points  of 
general  political  science  already  known  or  established:  for  though 
thus,  as  1  believe,  established,  some  which  I  shall  have  occasion  to 
rest  arguments  on  are  not  yet  by  any  means  universally  accepted ; 
and  therefore,  though  I  will  not  lose  time  in  any  detailed  defence 
of  them,  it  is  necessary  that  I  should  distinctly  tell  you  in  what 
form  I  receive,  and  wish  to  argue  from  them ;  and  this  the  more, 
because  there  may  perhaps  be  a  part  of  my  audience  who  have 
not  interested  themselves  in  political  economy,  as  it  bears  on 
ordinary  fields  of  labour,  but  may  yet  wish  to  hear  in  what  way 
its  principles  can  be  applied  to  Art.  I  shall,  therefore,  take  leave 
to  tre3j)ass  on  your  patience  with  a  few  elementary  statements  in 


14  PCLITICAL    ECONOMT    OF    ART.  [LKCT.    V 

the  outset,  and  with  the  expression  of  some  general  principles, 
here  and  ti  ere,  in  the  course  of  our  particular  inquiry. 

To  begin,  then,  with  one  of  these  necessary  truisms:  all 
economy,  whether  of  states,  households,  or  individuals,  may  bs 
defined  to  be  the  art  of  managing  labour.  The  world  is  so  regu- 
lated by  the  laws  of  Providence,  that  a  man's  labour,  well  applied, 
is  always  amply  sufficient  to  provide  him  during  his  life  with  all 
things  needful  to  him,  and  not  only  with  those,  but  with  many 
pleasant  objects  of  luxury ;  and  yet  farther,  to  procure  him  large 
intervals  of  healthful  rest  and  serviceable  leisure.  And  a  nation's 
labour,  well  applied,  is  in  like  manner  amply  suflBcient  to  provide 
its  whole  population  with  good  food  and  comfortable  habitation  ; 
and  not  with  those  only,  but  with  good  education  besides,  and 
objects  of  luxury,  art  treasures,  such  as  these  you  have  around  you 
now.  But  by  those  same  laws  of  Nature  and  Providence,  if  the 
'abour  of  the  nation  or  of  the  individual  be  misapplied,  and  much 
nore  if  it  be  insufficient, — if  the  nation  or  man  be  indolent  and 
unwise, — suffering  and  want  result,  exactly  in  proportion  to  the 
indolence  and  improvidence, — to  the  refusal  of  labour,  or  to  the 
misapplication  of  it.  Wherever  you  see  want,  or  misery,  or  degra- 
dation, in  this  world  about  you,  there,  be  sure,  either  industry  has 
been  wanting,  or  industry  has  been  in  error.  It  is  not  accident,  it 
is  not  Heaven-commanded  calamity,  it  is  not  the  original  and  ine- 
vitable evil  of  man's  nature,  which  fill  your  streets  with  lamen- 
tation, and  your  graves  with  prey.  It  is  only  that,  when  there 
should  have  been  providence,  there  has  been  waste;  when  there 
•hould  have  been  labour,  there  has  been  lasciviousness ;  and  wilful 
oess,  when  there  should  have  been  subordination.* 

Now,  we  have  warped  the  word  "  economy"  in  our  English 
language  into  a  meaning  which  it  has  no  business  whatever  to 
bear.     In  our  use  of  it,  it  o  instantly  signifies  merely  sparing  ox 

'  Proverbs  xiii.  23,  "  Much  food  is  in  the  tillage  of  the  poor,  but  there  il 

fliat  is  destroyed  for  want  of  judgment." 


ISCT.    I.J  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  15 

Baving;  economy  of  money  means  saving  money — econoruy  ol 
time,  sparing  time,  and  so  on.  ,  But  that  is  a  wholly  barbarous  use 
of  the  word — barbarous  in  a  double  sense,  for  it  is  not  English 
and  it  is  bad  Greek ;  barbarous  in  a  treble  sense,  for  it  is  not 
English,  it  is  bad  Greek,  and  it  is  worse  »ense.  Economy  no  more 
means  saving  money  than  it  means  spending  money.  It  means, 
the  administration  of  a  house ;  its  stewardship ;  spending  or  saving 
that  is,  whether  money  or  time,  or  anything  else,  to  the  best  pos- 
sible advantage.  In  the  simplest  and  clearest  definition  of  it, 
economy,  whether  public  or  private,  means  the  wise  management 
of  labour;  and  it  means  this  mainly  in  three  senses  :  namely,  first, 
applying  your  labour  rationally ;  secondly,  preserving  its  produce 
carefully  ;  lastly,  distributing  its  produce  seasonably. 

I  say  first,  applying  your  labour  rationally  ;  that  is,  so  as  to  ob- 
tain the  most  precious  things  you  can,  and  the  most  lasting  things, 
by  it :  not  growing  oats  in  land  where  you  can  grow  wheat,  nor 
putting  fine  embroidery  on  a  stuff"  that  will  not  wear.  Secondly, 
preserving  its  produce  carefully ;  that  is  to  say,  laying  up  your 
wheat  wisely  in  storehouses  for  the  time  of  famine,  and  keeping 
your  embroidery  watchfully  from  the  moth  ;  and  lastly,  distribut- 
ing its  produce  seasonably;  that  is  to  say,  being  able  to  carry  your 
com  at  once  to  the  place  where  the  people  are  hungry,  and  your 
embroideries  to  the  places  where  they  are  gay;  so  fulfilling  in  all 
ways  the  Wise  Man's  description,  whether  of  the  queenly  house- 
wife or  queenly  nation :  "  She  riseth  while  it  is  yet  night,  and 
giveth  meat  to  her  household,  and  a  portion  to  her  maidens.  She 
maketh  herself  coverings  of  tapestry,  her  clothing  is  silk  and  pur- 
ple. Strength  and  honour  are  in  her  clothing,  and  she  shall 
rejoice  in  time  to  come." 

Now,  you  will  observe  that  in  this  description  of  the  perfect 
economist,  or  mistress  of  a  household,  there  is  a  studied  expres- 
gion  of  the  balanced  division  of  her  care  between  the  two  greaJ 
objects  of  utility  and  splendour ;  in  her  right  hand,  food  and  fla^ 


16  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OV    AKT.  [lECT. 

for  life  and  clothing;  in  licr  left  hand,  the  purple  and  the  needle 
work,  for  honour  and  for  beauty.  All  perfect  housewifery  oi 
national  economy  is  known  by  these  two  divisions ;  wherevei 
either  is  wanting,  the  economy  is  imperfect.  If  the  motive  of  pomp 
prevails,  and  the  care  of  the  national  economist  is  directed  only  to 
the  accumulation  of  gold,  and  of  pictures,  and  of  silk  and  marble, 
you  know  at  once  that  the  time  must  soon  come  when  all  these 
treasures  shall  be  scattered  and  blasted  in  national  ruin.  If,  ofi 
the  contrary,  the  element  of  utility  prevails,  and  the  nation  dih 
dains  to  occupy  itself  in  any  wise  with  the  arts  of  beauty  or 
delight,  not  only  a  certain  quantity  of  its  energy  calculated  for 
exercise  in  those  arts  alone  must  be  entirely  wasted,  which  is  bad 
economy,  but  also  the  passions  connected  with  the  utilities  of  pro- 
perty become  morbidly  strong,  and  a  mean  lust  of  accumulation, 
merely  for  the  sake  of  accumulation,  or  even  of  labour,  merely  for 
the  sake  of  labour,  will  banish  at  least  the  serenity  and  the  morality 
of  life,  as  completely,  and  perhaps  more  ignobly,  than  even  the  lavish- 
ness  of  pride,  and  the  lightness  of  pleasure.  And  similarly,  and 
much  more  visibly,  in  private  and  household  economy,  you  may 
judge  always  of  its  perfectness  by  its  fair  balance  between  the  use 
and  the  pleasure  of  its  possessions.  You  will  see  the  wise  cottager's 
garden  trimly  divided  between  its  well-set  vegetables,  and  its  fragrant 
flowers ;  you  will  see  the  good  housewife  taking  pride  in  her  pretty 
table-cloth,  and  her  glittering  shelves,  no  less  than  in  her  well- 
dressed  dish,  and  her  full  storeroom ;  the  care  in  her  countenance 
will  alternate  with  gaiety ;  and  though  you  will  reverence  her  in 
her  seriousness,  you  will  know  her  best  by  her  smile. 

Now,  as  you  will  have  anticipated,  I  am  going  to  address  yon, 
on  this  and  our  succeeding  evening,  chiefly  on  the  subject  of  that 
economy  which  relates  rather  to  the  garden  than  the  farm-yard. 
I  shall  ask  you  to  consider  with  me  the  kind  of  laws  by  which  we 
shall  best  distribute  the  beds  of  our  national  garden,  and  raise  in  i\ 
the  sweetest  succession  of  trees  pleasant  to  the  sight,  and  (in  no 


LaCT.    I.]  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  Vi 

f(jrbiddcn  sense)  to  be  desired  to  make  us  wise.  But,  Dtforc  pro 
ceeding  to  open  this  specialty  of  our  subject,  let  me  pause  for  a  few 
moments  to  plead  with  you  for  the  acceptance  of  that  principle  ol 
government  or  authority  which  must  be  at  the  root  of  all  economy, 
whvither  for  use  or  for  pleasure.  I  said,  a  few  minutes  ago,  that  a 
nation's  labour,  well  applied,  was  amply  sufficient  to  provide  ita 
whole  population  with  good  food,  comfortable  clothing,  and  pleasant 
luxury.  But  the  good,  instant,  and  constant  application  is  every- 
thing. We  must  not,  when  our  strong  hands  are  thrown  out  of 
work,  look  wildly  about  for  want  of  something  to  do  with  them. 
If  ever  we  feel  that  want,  it  is  a  sign  that  all  our  household  is  out 
of  order.  Fancy  a  farmer's  wife,  to  whom  one  or  two  of  her  ser- 
vants should  come  at  twelve  o'clock  at  noon,  crying  that  they  had 
got  nothing  to  do ;  that  they  did  not  know  what  to  do  next :  and 
fancy  still  farther,  the  said  farmer's  wife  looking  hopelessly  about 
her  rooms  and  yard,  they  being  all  the  while  considerably  in  dis 
order,  not  knowing  where  to  set  the  spare  hand-maidens  to  work, 
and  at  last  complaining  bitterly  that  she  had  been  obliged  to  give 
them  their  dinner  for  nothing.  That's  the  type  of  the  kind  o. 
political  economy  we  practise  too  often  in  England.  Would  you 
not  at  once  assert  of  such  a  mistress  that  she  knew  nothing  of  her 
duties  ?  and  would  you  not  be  certain,  if  the  household  were 
rightly  managed,  the  mistress  would  be  only  too  glad  at  any  mo- 
ment to  have  the  help  of  any  number  of  spare  hands ;  that  she 
would  know  in  an  instant  what  to  set  them  to  ; — in  an  instant  what 
part  of  to-morrow's  work  might  be  most  serviceably  forwarded, 
what  part  of  next  month's  work  most  wisely  provided  for,  or  what 
new  task  of  some  profitable  kind  undertaken  ?  and  when  the  eve- 
ning came,  and  she  dismissed  her  servants  to  their  recreation  or 
their  rest,  or  gathered  them  to  the  reading  round  the  work-table, 
under  the  eaves  in  the  sunset,  would  you  not  be  sure  to  find  that 
none  of  them  had  been  overtasked  by  her,  just  because  none  had 
been  left  idle ;  that  everything  had  been  accomplished  because  aU 


18  •  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lEC'T.    i 

had  been  employed  ;  tLat  the  kindness  of  the  mistress  had  aided 
her  presence  of  mind,  and  the  slight  labour  had  been  entrusted  to 
the  weak,  and  the  formidable  to  the  strong;  and  that  as  none  had 
been  dishonoured  by  inactivity,  so  none  had  been  broken  by  toil  ? 
Now,  the  precise  counterpart  of  such  a  household  would  be 
Been  in  a  nation  in  which  political  economy  was  rightly  under 
fetood.  You  complain  of  the  difficulty  of  finding  work  for  your 
men.  Depend  upon  it  the  real  diflficulty  rather  is  to  find  men  for 
your  work.  The  serious  question  for  you  is  not  how  many  you 
have  to  feed,  but  how  much  you  have  to  do ;  it  is  our  inactivity, 
not  our  hunger,  that  ruins  us  :  let  us  never  fear  that  our  servants 
should  have  a  good  appetite — our  wealth  is  in  their  strength,  not 
in  their  starvation.  Look  around  this  island  of  yours,  and  see 
what  you  have  to  do  in  it.  The  sea  roars  against  your  harbour- 
less  cliff's — you  have  to  build  the  breakwater,  and  dig  the  port  of 
refuge ;  the  unclean  pestilence  ravins  in  your  streets — you  have  to 
bring  the  full  stream  from  the  hills,  and  to  send  the  free  winds 
through  the  thoroughfare ;  the  famine  blanches  your  lips  and  eats 
away  your  flesh — you  have  to  dig  the  moor  and  dry  the  marsh,  tc 
bid  the  morass  give  forth  instead  of  engulphing,  and  to  wring  the 
honey  and  oil  out  of  the  rock.  These  things,  and  thousands  such, 
we  have  to  do,  and  shall  have  to  do  constantly,  on  this  great  farm 
of  ours ;  for  do  not  suppose  that  it  is  anything  else  than  that. 
Precisely  the  same  laws  of  economy  which  apply  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  a  farm  or  an  estate  apply  to  the  cultivation  of  a  province 
or  of  an  island.  Whatever  rebuke  you  would  address  to  the  im- 
provident master  of  an  ill-managed  patrimony,  precisely  that  re- 
buke we  should  address  to  ourselves,  so  far  as  we  leave  our  popu- 
lation in  idleness  and  our  country  in  disorder.  What  would  you 
Bay  to  the  lord  of  an  estate  who  complained  to  you  of  his  poverty 
and  disabilities,  and,  when  you  pointed  out  to  him  that  his  land 
was  half  of  it  overrun  with  weeds,  and  that  his  fences  were  all  in 
ruin,  and  that  his  cattle-sheds  were  roofless,  and  his  labourers  It 


LECT.    I.]  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OB    ART.  19 

Ing  under  the  hedges  faint  for  want  of  food,  he  answered  to  you 
that  it  would  ruin  him  to  weed  his  land  or  to  roof  his  sheds — 
that  those  were  too  costly  operations  for  him  to  undertake,  and 
that  he  knew  not  how  to  feed  his  labourers  nor  pay  tl*em?  "Would 
you  not  instantly  answer,  that  instead  of  ruining  him  to  weed  his 
fields,  it  would  save  him  ;  that  his  inactivity  was  his  destruction, 
and  that  to  set  his  labourers  to  work  was  to  feed  them  ?  Now 
you  may  add  acre  to  acre,  and  estate  to  estate,  as  far  as  you  like, 
hut  you  will  never  reach  a  compass  of  ground  which  shall  escape 
from  the  authority  of  these  simple  laws.  The  principles  which 
are  right  in  the  administration  of  a  few  fields,  are  right  also  in  the 
administration  of  a  great  country  from  horizon  to  horizon  :  idle- 
ness does  not  cease  to  be  ruinous  because  it  is  extensive,  nor  labour 
to  be  productive  because  it  is  universal. 

Nay,  but  you  reply,  there  is  one  vast  difference  between  the 
nation's  economy  and  the  private  man's  :  the  farmer  has  full  au- 
thority over  his  labourers  ;  he  can  direct  them  to  do  what  is 
needed  to  be  done,  whether  they  like  it  or  not ;  and  he  can  turn 
them  away  if  they  refuse  to  work,  or  impede  others  in  their 
working,  or  are  disobedient,  or  quarrelsome.  There  is  this  great 
difference ;  it  is  precisely  this  difference  on  which  I  wish  to  fix 
your  attention,  for  it  is  precisely  this  difference  which  you  have  to 
do  away  with.  We  know  the  necessity  of  authority  in  farm,  or 
in  fleet,  or  in  army  ;  but  we  commonly  refuse  to  admit  it  in  Jhe 
body  of  the  nation.     Let  us  consider  this  point  a  little. 

In  the  various  awkward  and  unfortunate  efforts  which  the 
French  have  made  at  the  development  of  a  social  system,  they 
have  at  least  stated  one  true  principle,  that  of  fraternity  or  brother- 
hood. Do  not  be  alarmed ;  they  got  all  wrong  in  their  experi- 
ments, because  they  quite  forgot  that  this  fact  of  fraternity  implied 
another  fact  quite  as  important — that  of  paternity,  or  fatherhood 
That  is  to  say,  if  they  were  to  regard  the  nation  as  one  family 
the  condition  of  unity  in  that  family  consisted  no  less  in  their  hav 


yO  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lEOT.    t 

»ng  a  lead,  or  a  father,  than  in  their  being  faithful  f  nd  affection 
ate  members,  or  brothers.  But  we  must  not  forget  this,  for  wt 
have  long  confessed  it  with  our  lips,  though  we  refuse  to  confess 
it  in  our  lives.  For  half  an  hour  every  Sunday  we  expect  a 
man  in  a  black  gown,  supposed  to  be  telling  us  truth,  to  address 
us  as  brethren,  though  we  should  be  shocked  at  the  notion  of  any 
brotherhood  existing  among  us  out  of  church.  And  we  can 
hardly  read  a  few  sentences  on  any  political  subject  without  run- 
ning a  chance  of  crossing  the  phrase  "paternal  government," 
though  we  should  be  utterly  horror-struck  at  the  idea  of  govern- 
ments claiming  anything  like  a  father's  authority  over  us.  Now, 
I  believe  those  two  formal  phrases  are  in  both  instances  perfectly 
binding  and  accurate,  and  that  the  image  of  the  farm  and  its  ser- 
vants which  I  have  hitherto  used,  as  expressing  a  wholesome 
national  organization,  fails  only  of  doing  so,  not  because  it  is  too 
domestic,  but  because  it  is  not  domestic  enough  ;  because  the  real 
type  of  a  well-organized  nation  must  be  presented,  not  by  a  farm 
cultivated  by  servants  who  wrought  for  hire,  and  might  be  turned 
awav  if  they  refused  to  labour,  but  by  a  farm  in  which  the  master 
was  a  father,  and  in  which  all  the  servants  were  sons ;  which  im- 
plied, therefore,  in  all  its  regulations,  not  merely  the  order  of  expe- 
diency, but  the  bonds  of  affection  and  responsibilities  of  relation- 
ship ;  and  in  which  all  acts  and  services  were  not  only  to  be  sweet- 
ened by  brotherly  concord,  but  to  be  encfored  by  fatherly  authority.' 
Observe,  I  do  not  mean  in  the  least  that  we  ought  to  place  such 
an  authority  in  the  hands  of  any  one  person,  or  of  any  class,  oi 
body  of  persons.  But  I  do  mean  to  say  that  as  an  individual  who 
conducts  himself  wisely  must  make  laws  for  himself  which  at 
Borae  time  or  other  may  appear  irksome  or  injurious,  but  which, 
precisely  at  the  time  they  appear  most  irksome,  it  is  most  neces- 
sary he  should  obey,  so  a  nation  which  means  to  conduct  iteelf 

'  See  note  let,  in  Addenda. 


^KCT.    I.l  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  21 

wisely,  must  establish  authority  over  itself,  vested  either  in  kings, 
councils,  or  laws,  which  it  must  resolve  to  obey,  even  at  times 
when  the  law  or  authority  appears  irksome  to  the  body  of  tho 
people,  or  injurious  to  certain  masses  of  it.  And  this  kind  of 
national  law  has  hitherto  been  only  judicial ;  contented,  that  is, 
with  an  endeavour  to  prevent  and  punish  violence  and  crime ;  but, 
-as  we  advance  in  our  social  knowledge,  we  shall  endeavour  to 
make  our  government  paternal  as  well  as  judicial ;  that  is,  to 
establish  such  laws  and  authorities  as  may  at  once  direct  us  in  our 
occupations,  protect  us  against  our  follies,  and  visit  us  in  our  dis- 
tresses :  a  government  which  shall  repress  dishonesty,  as  now  it 
punishes  theft ;  which  shall  show  how  the  discipline  of  the  masses 
-may  be  brought  to  aid  the  toils  of  peace,  as  discipline  of  the  masses 
has  hitherto  knit  the  sinews  of  battle  ;  a  government  which  shall 
have  its  soldiers  of  the  ploughshare  as  well  as  its  soldiers  of  the^ 
sword,  and  which  shall  distribute  more  proudly  its  golden  crosses 
of  industry — golden  as  the  glow  of  the  harvest,  than  now  it  grants 
its  bronze  crosses  of  honour — bronzed  with  the  crimson  of  blood. 
I  have  not,  of  course,  time  to  insist  on  the  nature  or  details  of 
government  of  this  kind ;  only  I  wish  to  plead  for  your  several 
and  future  consideration  of  this  one  truth,  that  the  notion  of 
Discipline  and  Interference  lies  at  the  very  root  of  all  hunifin  pro- 
gress or  power ;  that  the  "  Let  alone"  principle  is,  in  all  things 
which  man  has  to  do  with,  the  principle  of  death  ;  that  it  is  ruin 
to  him,  certain  and  total,  if  he  lets  his  land  alone — if  he  lets  hia 
fellow-men  alone — if  he  lets  his  own  soul  alone.  That  his  whole 
life,  on  the  contrary,  must,  if  it  is  healthy  life,  be  continually  one 
of  ploughing  and  pruning,  rebuking  and  helping,  governing  and 
punishing ;  and  that  therefore  it  is  only  in  the  concession  of  some 
great  principle  of  restraint  and  interference  in  national  action  that 
he  can  ever  hope  to  find  the  secret  of  protection  against  national 
degradation.  I  believe  that  the  masses  have  a  right  to  claim  edu- 
cation from  their  government ;  but  only  so  far  as  they  acknow- 


22  POLIIICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [  L£CT.    I 

ledge  the  duty  of  yielding  obedience  to  their  go  ernment  1 
believe  they  have  a  right  to  claim  employment  from  their  govern- 
oiB ;  but  only  so  far  as  they  yield  to  the  governor  the  directior 
and  discipline  of  their  labour ;  and  it  is  only  so  far  as  they  grant 
to  the  men  whom  they  may  set  over  them  the  father's  authcrity 
to  check  the  childishness  of  national  fancy,  and  direct  the  way- 
wardness of  national  energy,  that  they  have  a  right  to  ask  that 
none  of  their  distresses  should  be  unrelieved,  none  of  their  weak 
nesses  unwatched;  and  that  no  grief,  nor  nakedness,  nor  peril 
should  exist  for  them,  against  which  the  father's  hand  was  not 
outstretched,  or  the  father's  shield  uplifted.' 

Now,  I  have  pressed  this  upon  you  at  more  length  than  is  need- 
ful or  proportioned  to  our  present  purposes  of  inquiry,  because  1 
would  not  for  the  first  time  speak  to  you  on  this  subject  of  politi- 
cal economy  without  clearly  stating  what  I  believe  to  be  its 
first  grand  principle.  But  its  bearing  on  the  matter  in  hand  is 
chiefly  to  prevent  you  from  at  once  too  violently  dissenting 
from  me  when  what  I  may  state  to  you  as  advisable  economy 
in  art  appears  to  imply  too  much  restraint  or  interference  with  the 
freedom  of  the  patron  or  artist.      We  are  a  little  apt,  though  on 

*  Compare  "Wordsworth's  Essay  on  the  Poor-Law  Amendment  Bill.  I 
quote  one  important  passage : — But,  if  it  be  not  safe  to  touch  the  abstract 
question  of  man's  right  in  a  social  state  to  help  himself  even  in  the  last  ex- 
tremity, may  we  not  still  contend  for  the  duty  of  a  Christian  government, 
standing  in  loco  parentis  towards  all  its  subjects,  to  make  such  effectual  pro^i- 
eion  that  no  one  shall  be  in  danger  of  perishing  either  through  the  neglect  or 
harshness  of  its  legislation  ?  Or,  waiving  this,  is  it  not  indisputable  that  the 
claim  of  the  State  to  the  allegiance,  involves  the  protection  of  the  subject  ? 
Ind,  as  all  rights  in  one  party  impose  a  correlative  duty  upon  another,  it  fol- 
lows that  the  right  of  the  State  to  require  the  services  of  its  members,  even 
to  the  jeoparding  of  their  hves  in  the  common  defence,  estabhshes  a  right  m 
the  people  (not  to  be  gainsaid  by  utilitarians  and  economists)  to  public  sup- 
port when,  from  any  cause,  they  may  be  unable  to  support  themaelveg."— 
(See  note  2nd,  in  Addenda.) 


'  LECT.    I.J  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  29 

the  whole  a  prudent  nation,  to  act  too  immediately  on  oui 
mipulses,  even  in  matters  merely  commercial ;  much  more  in 
those  involving  continual  appeals  to  our  fancies.  How  far,  there- 
fore, the  proposed  systems  or  restraints  may  be  advisable,  it  is  foi 
you  to  judge ;  only  I  pray  you  not  to  be  offended  w-ith  them 
merely  because  they  are  systems  and  restraints.  Do  you  at  all 
recollect  that  interesting  passage  of  Carlyle,  in  which  he  com- 
[)ares,  in  this  country  and  at  this  day,  the  understood  and 
commercial  value  of  man  and  horse ;  and  in  which  he  wonders 
that  the  horse,  with  its  inferior  brains  and  its  awkward  hoofiness, 
instead  of  handiness,  should  be  always  worth  so  many  tens  or 
scores  of  pounds  in  the  market,  while  the  man,  so  far  from  always 
commanding  his  price  in  the  market,  would  often  be  thought  to 
confer  a  service  on  the  community  by  simply  killing  himself  out 
of  their  way?  Well,  Carlyle  does  not  answer  his  own  question, 
because  he  supposes  we  shall  at  once  see  the  answer.  The  value 
of  the  horse  consists  simply  in  the  fact  of  your  being  able  to  pu 
a  bridle  on  him.  The  value  of  the  man  consists  precisely  in  th 
same  thing.  If  you  can  bridle  him,  or  which  is  better,  if  he  cau 
bridle  himself  he  will  be  a  valuable  creature  directly.  Otherwise, 
in  a  commercial  point  of  view,  his  value  is  either  nothing,  or  acci- 
dental only.  Only,  of  course,  the  proper  bridle  of  man  is  not  a 
leathern  one;  what  kind  of  texture  it  is  rightly  made  of,  we  find 
from  that  command,  "Be  ye  not  as  the  horse  or  as  the  mule 
which  have  no  understanding,  whose  mouths  must  be  held  in 
with  bit  and  bridle."  You  are  not  to  be  without  the  reins, 
indeed ;  but  they  are  to  be  of  another  kind ;  "  I  will  guide  thee 
with  mine  Eye."  So  the  bridle  of  man  is  to  be  the  Eye  of  God ; 
aud  if  he  rejects  that  guidance,  then  the  next  best  for  him  is  Ihe 
horse's  and  the  mule's,  which  have  no  understanding;  and  if 
he  rejects  that,  and  takes  the  bit  fairly  in  his  teeth,  then  there 
is  nothing  more  left  for  him  than  the  blood  that  comes  out  of  thfl 
city,  up  to  the  horsebridlea. 


24  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  |LEOT.    1 

Quitting,  however,  at  last  these  general  and  serious  laws  of 
government — or  rather  bringing  them  down  to  our  own  husinesa 
in  hand — we  have  to  consider  three  points  of  discipline  in  that 
particular  branch  of  human  labour  which  is  concerned,  not  with 
procuring  of  food,  but  the  expression  of  emotion;  we  have  to 
consider  respecting  art ;  first,  how  to  apply  our  labour  to  it ;  then, 
how  to  accumulate  or  preserve  the  results  of  labour ;  and  then, 
how  to  distribute  them.  But  since  in  art  the  labour  which  we 
have  to  employ  is  the  labour  of  a  particular  class  of  men — men 
who  have  special  genius  for  the  business,  we  have  not  only 
to  consider  how  to  apply  the  labour,  but  first  of  all  how  to 
produce  the  labourer ;  and  thus  the  question  in  this  particu- 
lar case  becomes  fourfold:  first,  how  to  get  your  man  of 
genius;  then,  how  to  employ  your  man  of  genius;  then,  how 
to  accumulate  and  preserve  his  work  in  the  greatest  quantity; 
and  lastly,  how  to  distribute  his  work  to  the  best  national  advan- 
tage.    Let  us  take  up  these  questions  in  succession. 

I.  Discovery. — How  are  we  to  get  our  men  of  genius :  that  is 
to  say,  by  what  means  may  we  produce  among  us,  at  any  given 
time,  the  greatest  quantity  of  effective  art-intellect  ?  A  wide  ques- 
tion, you  say,  involving  an  account  of  all  the  best  means  of  art 
education.  Yes,  but  I  do  not  mean  to  go  into  the  consideration  of 
those ;  I  want  only  to  state  the  few  principles  which  lie  at  the 
foundation  of  the  matter.  Of  these,  the  first  is  that  you  have 
always  to  find  your  artist,  not  to  make  him ;  you  can't  manufacture 
him,  any  more  than  you  can  manufacture  gold.  You  can  find 
him,  and  refine  him :  you  dig  him  out  as  he  lies  nugget-fashion  in 
the  mountain-stream  ;  you  bring  him  home ;  and  you  make  him 
into  current  coin,  or  household  plate,  but  not  one  grain  of  him  can 
you  originally  produce.  A  certain  quantity  of  art-intellect  is  bom 
annually  in  every  nation,  greater  or  less  according  to  the  nature 
and  cultivation  of  the  nation,  or  race  of  men ;  but  a  perfectly  fixed 


LEOT.    I.]  I.    DISCOVERY.  25 

quantity  annually,  not  increasable  by  one  grain.  You  may  lose 
it,  or  you  may  gather  it ;  you  may  let  it  lie  loose  in  the  ravine, 
and  buried  in  the  sands,  or  you  may  make  kings'  thrones  of  it.  and 
overlay  temple  gates  with  it,  as  you  choose  ;  but  the  best  you  can 
do  with  it  is  always  merely  sitting,  melting,  hammering,  purifying 
— never  creating.  And  there  is  another  thing  notable  about  this 
artistical  gold ;  not  only  is  it  limited  in  quantity,  but  in  use.  You 
need  not  make  thrones  or  golden  gates  with  it  unless  you  like,  but 
assuredly  you  can't  do  anything  else  with  it.  You  can't  make 
knives  of  it,  nor  armour,  nor  railroads.  The  gold  won't  cut  }  on, 
and  it  won't  carry  you  :  put  it  to  a  mechanical  use,  and  you  destroy 
•t  at  once.  It  is  quite  true  that  in  the  greatest  artists,  their  propei 
artistical  faculty  is  united  with  every  other ;  and  you  mav  make 
use  of  the  other  faculties,  and  let  the  artistical  one  lie  dormant. 
For  aught  I  know  there  may  be  two  or  three  Leonardo  da  Vincia 
employed  at  this  moment  in  your  harbours  and  railroads :  but  you 
are  not  employing  their  Leonardesque  or  golden  faculty  there,  you 
are  only  oppressing  and  destroying  it.  And  the  artistical  gift  in 
average  men  is  not  joined  with  others ;  your  born  painter,  if  you 
don't  make  a  painter  of  him,  won't  be  a  first-rate  merchant,  or 
lawyer ;  at  all  events,  whatever  he  turns  out,  his  own  special  gift 
is  unemployed  by  you  ;  and  in  no  wise  helps  him  in  that  other 
business.  So  here  you  have  a  certain  quantity  of  a  particular  sort 
of  intelligence,  produced  for  you  annually  by  providential  laws, 
which  you  can  only  make  use  of  by  setting  it  to  its  own  proper 
work,  and  which  any  attempt  to  use  otherwise  involves  the 
dead  loss  of  so  much  human  energy.  Well  then,  supposing  we 
wish  to  employ  it,  how  is  it  to  be  best  discovered  and  re- 
fined. It  is  easily  enough  discovered.  To  wish  to  employ 
it  is  to  discover  it.  All  that  you  need  is,  a  school  of  trial'  in 
every  important  town,  in  which  those  idle  farmers'  lads  whom 
their  masters  never  can  keep  out  of  mischief,  and  those  stupd 

'  See  note  3d,  in  Addenda. 
2 


26  POLITICAL    ECONOMV    OF    ART.  [lECT.    I 

tailors'  'prentices  who  are  always  stitching  the  sleeves  in  wrong 
way  upwards,  may  have  a  try  at  this  other  trade ;  only  this  schooi 
of  trial  must  not  be  entirely  regulated  by  formal  laws  of  art 
education,  but  must  ultimately  be  the  workshop  of  a  good  mastei 
painter,  who  will  try  the  lads  with  one  kind  of  art  and  another, 
till  he  finds  out  what  they  are  fit  for.  Next,  after  your  trial 
school,  you  want  your  easy  and  secure  employment,  which  is  the 
matter  of  chief  importance.  For,  even  on  the  present  system,  the 
boys  who  have  really  intense  art  capacity,  generally  make  painters 
of  themselves;  but  then,  the  best  half  of  their  early  energy  is 
ost  in  the  battle  of.  life.  Before  a  good  painter  can  get  employ- 
menti  his  mind  has  always  been  embittered,  and  his  genius  dis- 
torted. A  common  mind  usually  stoops,  in  plastic  chill,  to  what- 
ever is  asked  of  it,  and  scrapes  or  daubs  its  way  complacently  into 
Dublic  favour.*  But  your  great  men  quarrnl  with  you,  and  you 
revenge  yourselves  by  starving  them  for  the  first  half  of  theii 
lives.  Precisely  in  the  degree  in  which  any  painter  possesses 
original  genius,  is  at  present  the  increase  of  moral  certainty  thai 
during  his  early  years  he  will  have  a  hard  battle  to  fight ;  and 
that  just  at  the  time  when  his  conceptions  ought  to  be  full  and 
happy,  his  temper  gentle,  and  liis  hopes  enthusiastic— just  at  that 
most  critical  period,  his  heart  is  full  of  anxieties  and  household 
cares ;  he  is  chilled  by  disappointments,  and  vexed  by  injustice ; 
he  becomes  obstinate  in  his  errors,  no  less  than  in  his  virtues, 
and  the  arrows  of  his  aims  are  blunted,  as  the  reeds  of  his  trust 
are  broken. 

What  we  mainly  want,  therefore,  is  a  means  of  sufBcient  and 
inagitated  employment :  not  holding  out  great  prizes  for  which 
young  painters  are  to  scramble  ;  <ut  famishing  all  with  adequato 
support,  and  opportunity  to  display  such  power  as  they  possess 
without  rejection  or  mortification.     I  need  not  say  that  the  bes< 

*  See  note  ■Ith,  in  Addenda. 


LECT.    I.J  I.    Dl&tA^VERT.  2'- 

field  of  labour  of  tins  kind  would  be  presented  by  the  constanc 
progress  of  public  woijsa  involving  various  decorations ;  and  \vf 
will  presently  examine  what  kind  of  public  works  may  thus,  ad 
vantageously  for  the  nation,  be  in  constant  progress.  But  a  more 
important  matter  even  than  this  of  steady  employment,  is  the 
kind  of  criticism  with  which  you,  the  public,  receive  the  woiks  of 
the  young  men  submitted  to  you.  You  may  do  much  hani]  by 
indiscreet  praise  and  by  indiscreet  blame ;  but  remember,  the 
chief  harm  is  always  done  by  blame.  It  stands  to  reason  that  a 
young  man's  work  cannot  be  perfect.  It  must  be  more  or  less 
ignorant ;  it  must  be  more  or  less  feeble ;  it  is  likely  that  it  may 
be  more  or  less  expeiimental,  and  if  experimental,  here  and  there 
mistaken.  If,  therefore,  you  allow  yourself  to  launch  out  into 
sudden  barking  at  the  first  faults  you  see,  the  probability  is  thai 
you  arc  abusing  the  youth  for  some  d'efect  naturally  and  inevitably 
belonging  to  that  stage  of  his  progress ;  and  that  you  might  jusi 
as  rationally  find  fault  with  a  child  for  not  being  as  prudent  as  ? 
privy  councillor,  or  with  a  kitten  for  not  being  as  grave  as  a  cat. 
But  there  is  one  fault  which  you  may  be  quite  sure  is  unnecessary, 
and  therefore  a  real  and  blameable  fault:  that  is  haste,  involving 
negligence.  Whenever  you  see  that  a  young  man's  work  is  either 
bold  or  slovenly,  then  you  may  attack  it  firmly ;  sure  of  being 
right.  If  his  w^ork  is  bold,  it  is  insolent;  repress  his  insolence  : 
if  it  is  slovenly,  it  is  indolent ;  repress  his  indolence.  So  long  as 
he  works  in  that  dashing  or  impetuous  way,  the  best  hope  for  him 
is  in  your  contempt :  and  it  is  only  by  the  fact  of  his  seeming  not 
to  seek  your  a[)probation  that  you  may  conjecture  he  deserves  it. 
But  if  he  does  deserve  it,  be  sure  that  you  give  it  him,  else  you 
not  only  run  a  chance  of  driving  hini  from  the  right  road  by  want 
of  encouragement,  but  you  deprive  yourselves  of  the  happiest  pri- 
vilege you  will  ever  have  of  rewarding  his  labour.  For  it  is  only 
the  young  who  can  receive  much  reward  from  men's  praise  :  the 
old-,  when  they  arc  great,  gjt  too  fa"  beyond  and  above  you  to 


28  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [l.ECT.    1 

care  what  you  think  of  them.  You  may  urge  them  then  witl" 
sympathy,  and  surround  them  then  with  acclamation  ;  but  they 
will  doubt  your  pleasure,  and  despise  your  praise.  You  might 
have  cheered  them  in  their  race  through  the  asphodel  meadows 
of  their  youth  ;  you  might  have  brought  the  proud,  bright  scarlet 
into  their  faces,  if  you  had  but  cried  once  to  them  "  Well  done," 
as  they  dashed  up  to  the  first  goal  of  their  early  ambition.  But 
now,  their  pleasure  is  in  memory,  and  their  ambition  is  in  heaven. 
They  can  be  kind  to  you,  but  you  never  more  can  be  kind  to 
them.  You  may  be  fed  with  the  fruit  and  fulness  of  their  old 
age,  but  you  were  as  the  nipping  blight  to  them  in  their  blossom- 
ing, and  your  praise  is  only  as  the  warm  winds  of  autumn  to  the 
dying  branches. 

There  is  one  thought  still,  the  saddest  of  all,  bearing  on  this 
withholding  of  early  help.  It  is  possible,  in  some  noble  natures, 
that  the  warmth  and  the  affections  of  childhood  may  remain  un- 
chilled,  though  unanswered ;  and  that  the  old  man's  heart  may 
still  be  capable  of  gladness,  when  the  long-withheld  sympathy  ia 
given  at  last.  But  in  these  noble  natures  it  nearly  always  hap- 
pens, that  the  chief  motive  of  earthly  ambition  has  not  been  to 
give  delight  to  themselves,  but  to  their  parents.  Every  noble 
youth  looks  back,  as  to  the  chiefest  joy  which  this  world's  honour 
ever  gave  him,  to  the  moment  when  first  he  saw  his  father's  eyea 
flash  with  pride,  and  his  mother  turn  away  her  head,  lest  ho 
should  take  hei  tears  for  tears  of  sorrow.  Even  the  lover's  joy, 
when  some  worthiness  of  his  is  acknowledged  before  his  mistress, 
is  not  so  great  as  that,  for  it  is  not  so  pure — the  desire  to  exalt 
himself  in  her  eyes  mixes  with  that  of  giving  her  delight ;  but  he 
does  not  need  to  exalt  himself  in  his  parents'  eyes  :  it  is  with  the 
pure  hope  of  giving  them  pleasure  that  he  comes  to  tell  them 
what  he  has  done,  or  what  has  been  said  of  him  ;  and  therefore 
he  has  a  purer  pleasure  of  his  own.  And  this  purest  and  best  of 
rewards  you  keep  from  him  if  you  can:  you  feed  him  in  hii 


L«CT.   I.]  I.   DISCOVERT.  29 

tender  yoath  witli  ashes  and  dishonour ;  and  thet  you  come  to 
him,  obsequious,  but  too  late,  with  your  sharp  laurel  ciown,  the 
dew  all  dried  from  off  its  leaves ;  and  you  thrust  it  into  his  languid 
hand,  and  he  looks  at  you  wistfully.  What  shall  he  do  with  itl 
WTaat  can  he  do,  but  go  and  lay  it  on  his  mother's  grave  ? 

Thus,  then,  you  see  that  you  have  to  provide  for  your  young 
men  :  first,  the  searching  or  discovering  school ;  then  the  calm, 
employment ;  then  the  justice  of  praise  :  one  thing  more  you  have 
to  do  for  them  in  preparing  them  for  full  service — namely,  to 
make,  in  the  noble  sense  of  the  word,  gentlemen  of  them ;  that  is 
to  say,  to  take  care  that  their  minds  receive  such  training,  that  in 
all  they  paint  they  shall  see  and  feel  the  noblest  things.  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  that  of  all  parts  of  an  artist's  education  this  is  the 
most  neglected  among  us  ;  and  that  even  whore  the  natural  taste 
and  feeling  of  the  youth  have  been  pure  and  true,  where  there 
was  the  right  stuff  in  him  to  make  a  gentleman  of,  you  may  toe 
frequently  discern  some  jarring  rents  in  his  mind,  and  elements  of 
degradation  in  his  treatment  of  srubject,  owing  to  want  of  gentle 
training,  and  of  the  liberal  influence  of  literature.  This  is  quite 
visible  in  our  greatest  artists,  even  in  men  like  Turner  and  Gains- 
borough; while  in  the  common  grade  of  our  second-rate  painters 
the  evil  attains  a  pitch  which  is  far  too  sadly  manifest  to  need  my 
dwelling  upon  it.  Now,  no  branch  of  art  economy  is  more  im- 
portant than  that  of  making  the  intellect  at  your  disposal  pure  as 
well  as  powerful ;  so  that  it  may  always  gather  for  you  the  sweet- 
est and  fairest  things.  The  same  quantity  of  labour  from  the  same 
man's  hand,  will,  according  as  you  liavc  trained  him,  produce  3 
lovely  and  useful  work,  or  a  base  and  hurtful  one ;  and  depend 
upon  it,  wliatever  value  it  may  possess,  by  reason  of  the  painter's 
skill,  its  chief  and  final  value,  to  any  nation,  depends  upon  ita 
heing  able  to  exalt  and  refine,  as  well  as  to  please;  and  that  the 
picture  which  most  truly  deserves  the  name  of  an  art-treasure,  is 
tiiat  which  has  been  painted  by  a  good  man. 


30  POLITICAL    ECONOxMY    OF   ART.  [lECT.    I 

You  cannot  but  see  how  far  this  would  lead,  if  I  were  to 
enlarge  upon  it.  I  must  take  it  up  as  a  separate  subject  some 
other  time :  only  noticing  at  present  that  no  money  could  be 
Letter  spent  by  a  nation  than  in  providing  a  liberal  and  disci- 
plined education  for  its  painters,  as  they  advance  into  the  critical 
period  of  their  youth  ;  and  that  also,  a  large  part  of  their  powei 
during  life  depends  upon  the  kind  of  subjects  which  you,  the  pub 
lie  ask  them  for,  and  therefore  the  kind  of  thoughts  with  which 
you  require  them  to  be  habitually  familiar.  I  shall  have  more  to 
say  on  this  head  when  we  come  to  consider  what  employment 
they  should  have  in  public  buildings. 

There  are  many  other  points  of  nearly  as  much  importance  as 
these,  to  be  explained  with  reference  to  the  development  of 
genius ;  but  I  should  have  to  ask  you  to  come  and  hear  six  lec- 
tures instead  of  two  if  I  were  to  go  into  their  detail.  For  in- 
stance, I  have  not  spoken  of  the  way  in  which  you  ought  to  look 
for  those  artificers  in  various  manual  trades,  who,  without  possess- 
ing the  order  of  genius  which  you  would  desire  to  devote  to 
higher  purposes,  yet  possess  wit,  and  humour,  and  sense  of  colour, 
and  fancy  for  form — all  commercially  valuable  as  quantities  of 
intellect,  and  all  more  or  less  expressible  in  the  lower  arts  of  iron- 
work, pottery,  decorative  sculpture,  and  such  like.  But  these 
details,  interesting  as  they  are,  I  must  commend  to  your  own  con- 
sideration, or  leave  for  some  future  inquiry.  I  want  just  now 
only  to  set  the  bearings  of  the  entire  subject  broadly  before  you, 
with  enough  of  detailed  illustration  to  make  it  intelligible  ;  and 
therefore  I  must  quit  the  first  head  of  it  here,  and  pass  to  the 
second,  namely,  how  best  to  employ  the  genius  we  discover.  A 
certain  quantity  of  able  hands  and  heads  being  placed  at  our  dis- 
Dosal,  what  shall  we  most  advisably  set  them  upon  ? 

II.  Application. — There  are  three  main  points  the  econoniisi 

has  to  attend  to  in  this. 


I.ECT.   1.]  II.    APPLICATION.  81 

First,  To  set  his  men  to  various  work. 

Secondly,  To  easy  work. 

Thirdly,  to  lasting  work. 

I  shall  briefly  touch  on  the  first  two,  for  I  want  to  arrest  joui 
attention  on  the  last. 

I  say  first,  to  various  work.  Supposing  you  have  two  men  oi 
equal  power  as  landscape  painters — and  both  of  them  have  an 
hour  at  your  disposal.  You  would  not  set  them  both  to  paint  the 
same  piece  of  landscape.  You  would,  of  course,  rather  have  two 
subjects  than  a  repetition  of  one. 

Well,  supposing  them  sculptors,  will  not  the  same  rule  hold  ? 
You  naturally  conclude  at  once  that  it  will;  but  you  will  have 
Lard  work  to  convince  your  modern  architects  of  that.  They 
will  put  twenty  men  to  work,  to  carve  twenty  capitals;  and  all 
sliall  be  the  same.  If  I  could  show  you  the  architects'  yards  in 
England  just  now,  all  open  at  once,  perhaps  you  might  see  a 
thousand  clever  men,  all  employed  in  carving  the  same  design. 
Of  the  degradation  and  deathfulness  to  the  art-intellect  of  the 
country  involved  in  such  a  habit,  I  have  more  or  less  been  led  to 
speak  before  now;  but  I  have  not  hitherto  marked  its  definite 
tendency  to  increase  the  price  of  work,  as  such.  When  men  are 
employed  continually  in  carving  the  same  ornaments,  they  get 
into  a  monotonous  and  methodical  habit  of  labour — precisely  cor- 
respondent to  that  in  which  they  would  break  stones,  or  paint 
house-walls.  Of  course,  what  they  do  so  constantly,  they  do 
easily ;  and  if  you  excite  them  temporarily  by  an  increase  of 
wages  you  may  get  much  work  done  by  them  in  a  little  time. 
But,  unless  so  stimulated,  men  condemned  to  a  monotonous  exer- 
tion, work — and  always,  by  the  laws  of  human  nature,  must 
work — only  at  a  tranquil  rate,  not  pioducing  by  any  means  a 
maximum  result  in  a  given  time.  But  if  you  allow  them  to  varv 
their  designs,  and  thus  interest  their  heads  and  hearts  in  what 
they  arc  doing,  you  will  find  them  become  eager,  first,  to  get  thcil 


32  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  I  LECT.    L 

ideas  expressed,  and  then  to  finish  the  expression  of  them ;  and 
the  moral  energy  thus  brought  to  bear  on  the  matter  quickens, 
and  therefore  cheapens,  the  production  in  a  most  important 
legree.  Sir  Thomas  Deane,  the  .architect  of  the  new  Museum  at 
Oxford,  told  me,  as  I  passed  through  Oxford  on  my  way  here,  that 
he  found  that,  owing  to  this  cause  alone,  capitals  of  various  design 
could  be  executed  cheaper  than  capitals  of  similar  design  (the 
amount  of  hand  labour  in  each  being  the  same)  by  about  30  pei 
cent. 

Well,  that  is  the  first  way,  then,  in  which  you  will  employ  your 
intellect  well ;  and  the  simple  observance  of  this  plain  rule  of  po- 
litical economy  will  effect  a  noble  revolution  in  your  architecture, 
such  as  you  cannot  at  present  so  much  as  conceive.  Then  the 
second  way  in  which  we  are  to  guard  against  waste  is  by  setting 
our  men  to  the  easiest,  and  therefore  the  quickest,  work  which 
will  answer  the  purpose.  Marble,  for  instance,  lasts  quite  as  long 
as  granite,  and  is  much  softer  to  work ;  therefore,  when  you  get 
hold  of  a  good  sculptor,  give  him  marble  to  carve — not  granite. 
That,  you  say,  is  obvious  enough.  Yes ;  but  it  is  not  so  obvious 
how  much  of  your  workmen's  time  you  waste  annually  in  making 
them  cut  glass,  after  it  has  got  hard,  when  you  ought  to  make 
them  mould  it  while  it  is  soft.  It  is  not  so  obvious  how  much 
expense  you  waste  in  cutting  diamonds  and  rubies,  which  are  the 
hardest  things  you  can  find,  into  shapes  that  mean  nothing,  when 
the  same  men  might  be  cutting  sandstone  and  freestone  into 
snapes  that  mean  something.  It  is  not  so  obvious  how  much  of 
the  artists'  time  in  Italy  you  waste,  by  forcing  them  to  make 
wretched  little  pictures  for  you  out  of  crumbs  of  stone  glued 
together  at  enormous  cost,  when  the  tenth  of  the  time  would 
make  good  and  noble  pictures  for  you  out  of  water-colour.  I 
could  go  on  giving  you  almost  numberless  instances  of  this  great 
commercial  mistake ;  but  I  should  only  weary  and  confuse  you, 
I  therefore  commend  also  this  bead  cf  our  subject  to  your  own 


LKCT.    I.]  11.    APPLICATION.  83 

meditation,  and  proceed  to  the  last  I  named — the  last  I  shail  task 
your  patience  with  to-night.  You  know  we  are  now  considering 
how  to  apply  our  genius ;  and  we  were  to  do  it  as  economists,  h- 
three  ways: — 

To  various  work ; 

To  easy  work ; 

To  lasting  work. 

This  lasting  of  the  work,  then,  is  our  final  question. 

Many  of  you  may,  perhaps,  remember  that  Michael  Angelo  was 
once  commanded  by  Pietro  di  Medici  to  mould  a  statue  out  of 
snow,  and  that  he  obe^ied  the  command.*  I  am  glad,  and  we 
have  all  reason  to  be  glad,  that  such  a  fancy  ever  came  into  the 
mind  of  the  unworthy  prince,  and  for  this  cause :  that  Pietro  di 
Medici  then  gave,  at  the  period  of  one  great  epoch  of  consum- 
mate power  in  the  arts,  the  perfect,  accurate,  and  intensest -possible 
type  of  the  greatest  error  which  nations  and  princes  can  commit, 
respecting  the  power  of  genius  entrusted  to  their  guidance.  You 
had  there,  observe,  the  strongest  genius  in  the  most  perfect  obe- 
dience ;  capable  of  iron  independence,  yet  wholly  submissive  to  the 
patron's  will ;  at  once  the  most  highly  accomplished  and  the  most 
original,  capable  of  doing  as  much  as  man  could  do,  in  any  direc- 
tion that  man  could  ask.  And  its  governor,  and  guide,  and 
patron  sets  it  to  build  a  statue  in  snow — to  put  itself  into  the  ser 
vice  of  annihilation — to  make  a  cloud  of  itself,  and  pass  away  from 
the  earth. 

Now  this,  so  precisely  and  completely  done  by  Pietro  di  Medici, 
is  what  we  are  all  doing,  oxnctly  in  the  degree  in  which  we  direct 
the  genius  under  our  patronage  to  work  in  more  or  less  perish- 
able materiaU,  So  far  as  we  induce  painters  to  work  in  fading 
colours,  or  architects  to  buiid  with  imperfect  stiucturc,  or  in 
any  other  way  consult  only  immediate  ease  and  cheapness  in  the 

*  See  the  noble  pafuage  on  this  tradition  in  "  Casa  Guidi  'Windowa" 

2 


34  POLITICAL    ECONOMF    OF    ART.  [lKCT      , 

prodiictic-n  of  what  we  want,  to  the  exclusios  of  provident  thoug.'n 
as  to  its  permanence  and  serviceableness  in  after  ages ;  so  far  wo 
are  Rjrcing  our  Michael  Angelos  to  carve  in  snow.  The  first  duty 
of  the  economist  in  art  is,  to  see  that  no  intellect  shall  thus  glitter 
meiely  in  the  manner  of  hoar-frost;  but  that  it  shall  be  well  vitri- 
fied, like  a  painted  window,  and  shall  be  set  so  between  shafts  of 
stone  and  bands  of  iron,  that  is  shall  bear  the  sunshine  upon  it, 
and  send  the  sunshine  through  it,  from  generation  to  generation. 

]  can  conceive,  however,  some  political  economist  to  interrupt 
me  here,  and  say,  "  If  you  make  your  art  wear  too  well,  you  wil 
soon  have  too  much  of  it ;  you  will  throv^.  your  artists  quite  out  of 
work.  Better  allow  for  a  little  wholesome  evanescence — bench- 
cent  destruction  :  let  each  age  provide  art  for  itself,  or  we  shall 
soon  have  so  many  good  pictures  that  we  shall  not  know  what  to 
do  witltthem." 

Remember,  my  dear  hearers,  who  are  thus  thinkings  that  politi- 
cal economy,  like  every  other  subject,  cannot  be  dealt  with  effec- 
tively if  we  try  to  solve  two  questions  at  a  time  instead  of  one.  It 
is  one  question,  how  to  get  plenty  of  a  thing ;  and  another, 
whether  plenty  of  it  will  be  good  for  us.  Consider  these  two 
matters  separately;  never  confuse  yourself  by  interweaving  one 
with  the  other.  It  is  one  question,  how  to  treat  your  fields  so  as 
to  get  a  good  harvest ;  another,  whether  you  wish  to  have  a  good 
harvest,  or  would  rather  like  to  keep  up  the  price  of  corn.  It  is 
one  question,  how  to  graft  your  trees  so  as  to  grow  most  apples ; 
and  quite  another,  whether  having  such  a  heap  of  apples  in  the 
storeroom  will  not  make  them  all  rot. 

Now,  therefore,  that  we  are  talking  only  about  grafting  and 
jrrowino:,  pray  do  not  vex  yourselves  with  thinking  what  you  are 
to  do  with  the  pippins.  It  may  be  desirable  for  us  to  Iiave  mucii 
art,  or  little — we  will  examine  that  by  and  by ;  but  just  now,  let 
Qs  keep  to  the  simple  consideration  how  to  get  plenty  of  good  art  if 
we  wan*  it.     Perhaps  it  might  be  just  as  well  that  a  man  of  modo 


tKCT.    I.J  II.    APPLICATION.  8d 

rate  income  should  be  able  to  possess  a  good  picture,  as  that  any 
work  of  real  merit  should  cost  500^.  or  1000/.;  at  all  events,  it 
is  certainly  one  of  the  brajches  of  political  economy  to  ascertain 
how,  if  we  like,  we  can  get  things  in  quantities — plenty  of  corn, 
plenty  of  wine,  plenty  of  gold,  or  plenty  of  pictures. 

It  has  just  been  said,  that  the  first  great  secret  is  to  produce  work 
that  will  last.  Now,  the  conditions  of  work  lasting  are  twofold : 
it  must  not  only  be  in  materials  that  will  last,  but  it  must  be  itsel'. 
of  H  quality  that  will  last — it  must  be  good  enough  to  bear  the  test 
of  time.  If  it  is  not  good,  we  shall  tire  of  it  quickly,  and  throw 
it  aside — we  shall  have  no  pleasure  in  the  accumulation  of  it.  So 
that  the  first  question  of  a  good  art-economist  respecting  any  work 
is,  Will  it  lose  its  flavour  by  keeping  ?  It  may  be  very  amusing 
now,  and  look  much  like  a  work  of  genius.  But  what  will  be  its 
value  a  hundred  years  hence  ? 

You  cannot  always  ascertain  this.  You  may  get  what  you  fancy 
to  be  work  of  the  best  quality,  and  yet  find  to  your  astonishment 
that  it  won't  keep.  But  of  one  thing  you  may  be  sure,  that  ail 
which  is  produced  hastily  will  also  perish  hastily ;  and  that  what 
is  cheapest  to  you  now,  is  likely  tc^  be  dearest  in  the  end. 

I  am  sorry  to  say,  the  great  tendency  of  this  age  is  to  expend  ita 
genius  in  perishable  art  of  this  kind,  as  if  it  were  a  triumph  to 
burn  its  thoughts  away  in  bonfires.  There  is  a  vast  quantity  of 
intellect  and  of  labour  consumed  annually  in  our  cheap  illustrated 
publications ;  you  triumph  in  them ;  and  you  think  it  so  grand  a 
thing  to  get  so  many  woodcuts  for  a  penny.  Why,  woodcuts, 
penny  and  all,  are  as  much  lost  to  you  as  if  you  had  invested  your 
money  in  gossamer.  More  lost,  for  the  gossamer  could  only  tickle 
your  face,  and  glitter  in  your  eyes;  it  could  not  catch  your  feet 
and  trip  you  up  :  but  the  bad  art  can,  and  does  ;  for  you  can't  like 
good  woodcuts  as  long  as  you  look  at  the  bad  ones.  If  we  were 
at  this  moment  to  come  across  a  Titian  woodcut,  or  a  Durer  wood- 
cut, wo  should  not  like  it — those  of  us  at  least  who  are  accustome<* 


36  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.    1 

to  the  cheap  work  of  the  day.  We  don't  like,  and  can't  like,  thai 
long ;  but  when  we  are  tired  of  one  bad  cheap  thing,  we  throw  u 
a'iide  and  buy  another  bad  cheap  thing ;  and  so  keep  looking  at 
bad  things  all  our  lives.  Now,  the  very  men  who  do  all  that  quick 
bad  work  for  us  are  capable  of  doing  perfect  work.  Only,  perfect 
work  can't  be  hurried,  and  therefore  it  can't  be  cheap  beyond  a 
certain  point.  But  suppose  you  pay  twelve  times  as  much  as  yoa 
do  now,  and  you  have  one  woodcut  for  a  shilling  instead  of  twelve ; 
and  the  one  woodcut  for  a  shilling  is  as  good  as  art  can  be,  so  that 
you  will  never  tire  of  looking  at  it ;  and  is  struck  on  good  paper 
with  good  ink,  so  that  you  will  never  wear  it  out  by  haudling  it ; 
while  you  are  sick  of  your  penny  each  cuts  by  the  end  of  the  week 
and  have  torn  them  mostly  in  half  too.  Isn't  your  shilling's  wortn 
the  best  bargain  ? 

It  is  not,  however,  only  in  getting  prints  or  woodcuts  of  the  best 
kind  that  you  will  practise  economy.  There  is  a  certain  quality 
about  an  original  drawing  which  you  cannot  get  in  a  woodcut,  and 
the  best  part  of  the  genius  of  any  man  is  only  expressible  in  ori- 
ginal work,  whether  with  pen  and  ink — pencil  or  colours.  This  is 
not  always  the  case ;  but  in  general  the  best  men  are  those  who 
can  only  express  themselves  on  paper  or  canvass :  and  you  will, 
therefore,  in  the  long  run,  get  most  for  your  money  by  buying 
original  work;  proceeding  on  the  principle  already  laid  down,  that 
the  best  is  likely  to  be  the  cheapest  in  the  end.  Of  course,  origina' 
work  cannot  be  produced  under  a  certain  cost.  If  you  want  a 
man  to  make  you  a  drawing  which  takes  him  six  days,  you  must, 
at  all  events,  keep  him  for  six  days  in  bread  and  water,  fire  and 
lodging ;  that  is  the  lowest  price  at  which  he  can  do  it  for  you,  but 
that  is  not  very  dear :  and  the  best  bargain  which  can  possibly  be 
made  honestly  in  art — the  very  ideal  of  a  cheap  purchase  to  the 
purchaser — is  the  original  work  of  a  great  man  fed  for  as  many 
days  as  are  necessary  on  bread  and  water,  or  perhaps  we  may  say 
with  as  many  onions  as  will  keep  him  in  good  humour.     That  ii 


LKOT.   I.j  n.    APPLICATION.  37 

the  way  by  which  you  will  always  get  most  for  your  money  ;  no 
mechanical  multiplication  or  ingenuity  of  commercial  arraiigeinenta 
will  ever  get  you  a  better  penny's  worth  of  art  than  that. 

Without^  however,  pushing  our  calculations  quite  to  this  prisor 
discipljve  extreme,  we  may  lay  it  down  as  a  rule  in  art-economy 
that  original  work  is,  on  the  whole,  cheapest  and  best  worth  having 
]iut  precisely  in  proportion  to  the  value  of  it  as  a  production, 
becomes  the  importance  of  having  it  executed  in  permanent  mate- 
rials. And  here  we  come  to  note  the  second  main  error  of  the 
day,  that  we  not  only  ask  our  workmen  for  bad  art,  but  we  make 
them  put  it  into  bad  substance.  We  have,  for  example,  put  a  great 
quantity  of  genius,  within  the  last  twenty  years,  into  water-colour 
drawing,  and  we  have  done  this  with  the  most  reckless  disregard 
whether  either  the  colours  or  the  paper  will  stand.  In  most  instan- 
ces, neither  will.  By  accident,  it  may  happen  that  the  colours  in 
a  gn  on  drawing  have  been  of  good  quality,  and  its  paper  uninjured 
by  chemical  processes.  But  you  take  not  the  least  care  to  ensure 
these  being  so;  I  have  myself  seen  the  most  destructive  changes 
take  place  in  water-colour  drawings  within  twenty  years  after  they 
were  painted ;  and  from  all  I  can  gather  respecting  the  recklessness 
of  modern  paper  manufacture,  my  belief  is,  that  though  you  may 
still  handle  an  Albert  Durer  engraving,  two  hundred  years  old, 
fearlessly,  not  one-half  of  that  time  will  have  passed  over  your 
modern  water-colours,  before  most  of  them  will  be  reduced  to  mere 
white  or  brown  rags ;  and  your  descendants,  twitching  them  con- 
temptuously into  fragments  between  finger  and  thumb,  will  mutter 
against  you,  half  in  scorn  and  half  in  anger,  "Those  wretched 
nineteenth  century  people  !  they  kept  vapouring  and  fuming  about 
tiie  world,  doing  what  they  called  business,  and'they  couldn't  make 
a  hheet  of  paper  that  wasn't  rotten."  And  note  that  this  is  no 
unimportant  portion  of  your  art  economy  at  this  time.  Your 
water-colour  painters  are  becoming  every  day  capable  of  express- 
ing greater  and  better  things;  and  their  material   is  espociallj 


b8  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OP    ART.  [lECT.  1 

adapted  to  the  turn  of  your  best  artists'  minds.  The  value  which 
you  could  accumulate  in  woik  of  this  kind  would  soon  become  a 
most  important  item  in  the  national  art-wealth,  if  only  you  would 
take  the  little  pains  necessary  to  secure  its  permanence.  I  aia 
inclined  to  think,  myself,  that  water-colour  ought  not  to  be  used 
on  paper  at  all,  but  only  on  vellum,  and  then,  if  properly  taken 
care  of,  the  drawing  would  be  almost  imperishable.  Still,  paper  is 
a  much  more  convenient  material  for  rapid  work ;  and  it  is  an 
infinite  absurdity  not  to  secure  the  goodness  of  its  quality,  when 
we  could  do  so  without  the  slightest  trouble.  Among  the  many 
favours  which  I  am  going  to  ask  from  our  paternal  government 
when  we  get  it,  will  be  that  it  will  supply  its  little  boys  with  good 
paper.  You  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  let  the  government  esta- 
blish a  paper  manufactory,  under  the  superintendence  of  any  of  our 
leading  chemists,  who  should  be  answerable  for  the  safety  and 
completeness  of  all  the  processes  of  the  manufacture.  The 
government  stamp  on  the  corner  of  your  sheet  of  drawing-paper, 
made  in  the  perfect  way,  should  cost  you  a  shilling,  which  would 
add  something  to  the  revenue ;  and  when  you  bought  a  water- 
colour  drawing  for  fifty  or  a  hundred  guineas,  you  would  have 
merely  to  look  in  the  corner  for  your  stamp,  and  pay  your  extr? 
shilling  for  the  security  that  your  hundred  guineas  were  given 
really  for  a  drawing,  and  not  for  a  coloured  rag.  There  need  be 
no  monopoly  or  restriction  in  the  matter;  let  the  paper  manu- 
facturers compete  with  the  government,  and  if  people  like  to  save 
their  shilling,  and  take  their  chance,  let  them;  only,  the  artist  and 
purchaser  might  then  be  sure  of  good  material,  if  they  liked,  and 
now  they  cannot  be. 

I  should  like  also  to  have  a  government  colour  manufactory; 
though  that  is  not  so  necessary,  as  the  quality  '■f  colour  is  more 
within  th?  artist's  power  of  testing,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  any 
painter  may  get  permanent  colour  from  the  respeiitable  manufac- 
turers, if  he  chooses.     I  will  not  attempt  to  ollow  the  subject  out 


(.EOT.   1. 1  II.    APPLICATION.  39 

at  all  as  it  respects  architecture,  and  our  methoils  of  modern 
building ;  respecting  which  I  have  had  occasion  to  speak  before 
now. 

But  I  cannot  pass  without  some  brief  notice  our  habit — con- 
tinuaUy,  as  it  seems  to  me,  gaining  strength — of  putting  a  large 
quantity  of  thought  and  work,  annually,  into  things  which  are 
eithei  in  their  nature  necessarily  perishable,  as  dress;  or  else  into 
compliances  with  the  fashion  of  the  day,  into  things  not  necessarily 
perishable,  as  plate.  I  am  afraid  almost  the  first  idea  of  a  young  rich 
couple  setting  up  house  in  London,  is,  that  they  must  have  new 
plate.  Their  father's  plate  may  be  very  handsome,  but  the  fashion 
is  changed.  They  will  have  a  new  service  from  the  leadinof  manu- 
facturer, and  the  old  plate,  except  a  few  apostle  spoons,  and  a  cup 
which  Charles  the  Second  drank  a  health  into  their  pretty  ances- 
tress, is  sent  to  be  melted  down,  and  made  up  with  new  flourishes 
and  fresh  histre.  Now,  so  long  as  this  is  the  case — so  long,  ob- 
serve, as  fashion  has  influence  on  the  manufacture  of  plate — so 
long  you  cannot  have  a  goldsmitJCs  art  in  this  country.  Do  you 
suppose  any  workman  woi'thy  the  name  will  put  his  brains  into  a 
cup  or  an  urn,  which  he  knows  is  to  go  to  the  melting  pot  in  half 
a  score  years?  He  will  not;  you  don't  ask  or  expect  it  of  him. 
You  ask  of  him  nothing  but  a  little  quick  handicraft — a  clever 
twist  of  a  handle  here,  and  a  foot  there,  a  convolvulus  from  the 
newest  school  of  design,  a  pheasant  frorii  Landseer's  game  cards  ; 
a  couple  of  sentimental  figures  for  supporters,  in  the  style  of  the 
signs  of  insurance  oflSces,  then  a  clever  touch  with  the  burnisher, 
and  there's  your  epergne,  the  admiration  of  all  the  footmen  at  the 
wedding-breakfast,  and  the  torment  of  some  unfortunate  youth 
who  cannot  see  the  pretty  girl  opposite  to  liim,  through  its  tyran- 
nous branches. 

But  you  don't  suppose  that  thaCs  goldsmith's  work?  Gold- 
Bmith's  work  is  made  to  last,  and  made  with  the  mei  's  whole 
heart  and  soul  in  it;  true  goldsmith's  work,  when  it  exists,  is 


40  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lKCT.   1 

generally  the  means  of  education  of  the  greatest  painters  and 
sculptors  of  the  day,  Francia  was  a  goldsmith  ;  Francia  was  not 
his  own  name,  but  that  of  his  master  the  jeweller;  and  he  signed 
his  pictures  almost  always,  "  Francia,  the  goldsmith,"  for  love  of 
his  master;  Ghirlandajo  was  a  goldsmith,  and  was  the  master  of 
Michael  Angelo  ;  Verrocchio  was  a  goldsmith,  and  was  the  master 
of  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Ghiberti  was  a  goldsmith,  and  beat  out 
the  bronze  gates  which  Michael  Angelo  said  might  serve  for  gates 
of  Paradise.  *  But  if  ever  you  want  work  like  theirs  again,  you 
must  keep  it,  though  it  should  have  the  misfortune  to  become  old 
fashioned.  You  must  not  break  it  up,  nor  melt  it  any  more 
There  is  no  economy  in  that ;  you  could  not  easily  waste  intellect 
more  grievously.  Nature  may  melt  her  goldsmith's  work  at  every 
Bunset  if  she  chooses ;  and  beat  it  out  into  chased  bars  again  at 
every  sunrise  ;  but  you  must  not.  The  way  to  have  a  truly  noble 
service  of  plate,  is  to  keep  adding  to  it,  not  melting  it. .  At  every 
marriage,  and  at  every  birth,  get  a  new  piece  of  gold  or  silver  if 
you  will,  but  with  noble  workmanship  on  it,  done  for  all  time,  and 
put  it  among  your  treasures ;  that  is  one  of  the  chief  things  which 
gold  was  made  for,  and  made  incorruptible  for.  When  we  know 
a  little  more  of  political  economy,  we  shall  find  that  none  but  par- 
tially savage  nations  need,  imperatively,  gold  for  their  currency;* 
but  gold  has  been  given  us,  among  other  things,  that  we  might 
put  beautiful  work  into  its  imperishable  splendour,  and  that  the 

'  Several  reasons  may  account  for  the  fact  that  goldsmith's  work  is  so 
wholesome  for  young  artists ;  first,  that  it  gives  great  firmness  of  hand  to 
deal  for  some  time  with  a  solid  substance ;  again,  that  it  induces  caution  and 
steadiness — a  boy  trusted  with  chalk  and  paper  suffers  an  immediate  temp- 
tation to  scrawl  upon  it  and  play  with  it,  but  he  dares  not  scrawl  on  gold, 
and  he  cannot  play  with  it ;  and,  lastly,  that  it  gives  great  dehcacy  and  pre- 
siflion  of  touch  to  work  upon  minute  forms,  and  to  aim  at  producing  richness 
and  finish  of  design  correspondent  to  the  preciousuess  of  the  material 

'  See  note  in  Addenda  on  the  nature  of  property. 


LECT.   I.J  IL    APPLICATION.  41 

artists  who  have  the  most  wilfiil  fancies  may  have  a  material  v^hich 
will  drag  out,  and  beat  out,  as  their  dreams  require,  and  will  hold 
itself  together  with  fantastic  tenacity,  whatever  rare  anrl  lelicate 
service  they  set  it  upon. 

So  here  is  one  branch  of  decorative  art  in  which  rich  people 
may  indulge  themselves  unselfishly ;  if  they  ask  for  good  art  in  it, 
they  may  be  sure  in  buying  gold  and  silver  plate  that  they  arc 
enforcing  useful  education  on  young  artists.  But  there  is  another 
branch  of  decorative  art  in  which  I  am  sorry  to  say  we  cannot,  at 
least  under  existing  circumstances,  indulge  ourselves,  with  the  hope 
of  doing  good  to  anybody,  I  mean  the  great  and  subtle  art  of  dress. 

And  here  I  must  interrupt  the  pursuit  of  our  subject  for  a  mo- 
ment or  two,  in  order  to  state  one  of  the  principles  of  political 
economy,  which,  though  it  is,  I  believe,  now  sufficiently  under- 
stood and  asserted  by  the  leading  masters  of  the  science,  is  not  yet, 
I  grieve  to  say,  acted  upon  by  the  plurality  of  those  who  have  the 
management  of  riches.  Whenever  we  spend  money,  we  of  course 
set  people  to  work  :  that  is  the  meaning  of  spending  money  ;  we 
may,  indeed,  lose  it  without  employing  anybody ;  but,  whenever 
we  spend  it,  we  set  a  number  of  people  to  work,  greater  or  less, 
of  course,  according  to  the  rate  of  wages,  but,  in  the  long  run, 
propoi-tioned  to  the  sum  we  spend.  Well,  your  shallow  people, 
because  they  see  that  however  they  spend  money  they  are  always 
employing  somebody,  and,  therefore,  doing  some  good,  think  and 
say  to  themselves,  that  it  is  all  one  how  they  spend  it — that  all 
their  apparently  selfish  luxury  is,  in  reality,  unselfish,  and  is  doing 
just  as  much  good  as  if  they  gave  all  their  money  away,  or  per- 
haps more  good  ;  and  I  have  heard  foolish  people  even  declare  it 
IF  a  principle  of  political  economy,  that  whoever  invented  a  new 
W4iit'  conferred  a  good  on  the  community.  I  have  not  words 
Btrong  enough — at  least  I   could  not,  without  shocking  you,  use 

'  See  note  5th  in  Addenda 


42  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART  [lECT.  T 

the  words  which  would  be  strong  enough — to  express  my  estimate 
of  the  absurdity  and  the  mischievousncss  of  this  popular  fallacy 
So  putting  a  great  restraint  upon  myself,  and  using  no  hard  words, 
I  will  simply  try  to  state  the  nature  of  it,  and  the  extent  ot  iU 
influence. 

Granted,  that  whenever  we  spend  money  for  whatever  purpose, 
we  set  people  to  work  ;  and  passing  by,  for  the  moment,  the 
question  whether  the  work  we  set  them  to  is  all  equally  healthy 
and  good  for  them,  we  will  assume  that  whenever  we  spend  a 
guinea  we  provide  an  equal  number  of  people  witb  healthy  main- 
tenance for  a  given  time.  But,  by  the  way  in  which  we  spend  it, 
we  entirely  direct  the  labour  of  those  people  during  that  given 
time.  We  become  their  masters  or  mistresses,  and  we  compel 
them  to  produce,  within  a  certain  period,  a  certain  article.  Now, 
that  article  may  he  a  useful  and  lasting  one,  or  it  may  be  a  useless 
and  perishable  one — it  may  be  one  useful  to  the  whole  community, 
or  useful  only  to  ourselves.  And  our  selfishness  and  folly,  or  our 
virtue  and  prudence,  are  shown,  not  by  our  spending  money,  but 
by  our  spending  it  for  the  wrong  or  the  right  thing  ;  and  we  are  wise 
and  kind,  not  in  maintaining  a  certain  number  of  people  for  a  given 
period,  but  only  in  requiring  them  to  produce,  during  that  period, 
the  kind  of  things  which  shall  be  useful  to  society,  instead  of  those 
vvnich  are  only  useful  to  ourselves. 

Thus,  for  instance  :  if  you  are  a  young  lady,  and  employ  a  cer- 
tain number  of  sempstresses  for  a  given  time,  in  making  a  given 
number  of  simple  and  serviceable  dresses,  suppose,  seven ;  of  which 
you  can  wear  one  yourself  for  half  the  winter,  and  give  six  away 
to  poor  girls  who  have  none,  you  are  spending  your  money  unself- 
ishly. But  if  you  employ  the  same  number  of  sempstresses  for  the 
same  number  of  days,  in  making  four,  or  five,  or  six  beautiful 
flounces  for  your  own  ball-dress — flounces  which  will  clothe  nc 
one  but  yourself  and  which  you  will  yourself  be  unable  to  weai 
at  more  than  one  ball — ^you  are  employing  your  money  selfishly 


I.ECT.    I.J  II.    APPLICATION.  43 

You  have  maintained,  indeed,"^in  each  case,  the  same  number  of 
people ;  but  in  the  one  case  you  have  directed  their  labour  to  the 
.'ioi tice  of  the  community ;  in  the  ot'ner  case  you  have  consumed 
it  wholly  upon  yourself.  I  don't  say  you  are  never  to  do  so ;  I 
don't  say  you  ought  not  sometimes  to  think  of  yourselves  only, 
and  to  make  yourselves  as  pretty  as  you  can  ;  only  do  not  confuse 
coquettishness  with  benevolence,  nor  cheat  yourselves  into  think- 
ing that  all  the  finery  you  can  wear  is  so  much  put  into  the 
hungry  mouths  of  those  beneath  you :  it  is  not  so  ;  it  is  what  you 
yourselves,  whether  you  will  or  no,  must  sometimes  instinctively 
feel  it  to  be — it  is  what  those  who  stand  shivering  in  the  streets, 
forming  a  line  to  watch  you  as  you  step  out  of  your  carriages, 
know  it  to  be ;  tliose  fine  dresses  do  not  mean  that  so  much 
lias  been  put  into  their  mouths,  but  that  so  much  has  been 
taken  out  of  their  mouths.  The  real  politico -economical  signifi- 
cation of  every  one  of  those  beautiful  toilettes,  is  just  this ;  that 
you  have  had  a  certain  number  of  people  put  for  a  certain  number 
of  days  wholly  under  your  authority,  by  the  sternest  of  slave- 
masters, — hunger  and  cold  ;  and  you  have  said  to  them,  "  I  will 
feed  you,  indeed,  and  clothe  you,  and  give  you  fuel  for  so  many 
davs ;  but  during  those  days  you  shall  work  foi'  me  only :  your 
little  brothers  need  clothes,  but  you  shall  make  none  for  them  : 
your  sick  friend  needs  clothes,  but  you  shall  make  none  for  her : 
you  yourself  will  soon  need  another,  and  a  warmer  dress  ;  but  you 
shall  make  none  for  yourself.  You  shall  make  nothing  but  lace 
anil  roses  for  me ;  for  this  fortnight  to  come,  you  shall  work  at 
the  patterns  and  petals,  and  then  I  will  crush  and  consume  them 
awav  in  an  hour."  You  will  perhaps  answer — "  It  may  not  be 
particularly  benevolent  to  do  this,  and  we  won't  call  it  so ;  but  at 
any  rate  we  do  no  wrong  in  taking  their  labour  when  we  pay 
them  their  wages  :  if  we  pay  for  their  work  we  have  a  right  tc 
't."  No; — a  thousand  times  no.  The  labour  which  you  have 
paid  for,  does  indeed  become,  by  the  act  of  purchase,  your  owp 


44  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  IlECT.   I 

labour  :  you  have  bought  the  hands  and  the  time  of  tLceo  wcik 
ers;  they  are,  by  right  and  justice,  your  own  Jianas,  your  owe 
time.  But,  have  you  a  right  to  spend  your  own  time,  to  worfe 
with  3'our  own  hands,  only  for  your  own  advantage  ?—  much 
more,  when,  by  purchase,  you  have  invested  your  own  person 
with  the  strength  of  others ;  and  added  to  your  own  lite,  a  part 
of  the  life  of  others  ?  You  may,  indeed,  to  a  certain  extent,  use 
their  labour  for  your  delight ;  remember,  I  am  making  no  gene- 
ral assertions  against  splendour  of  dress,  or  pomp  ot  accessaries 
of  life  ;  on  the  contrary,  there  are  many  reasons  for  thmismg  that 
we  do  not  at  present  attach  enough  importance  to  beautiful  dress, 
as  one  of  the  means  of  influencing  general  taste  and  character. 
But  I  do  say,  that  you  must  weigh  the  value  of  what  vou  ask 
these  workers  to  produce  for  you  in  its  own  distinct  balance  :  that 
on  its  own  worthiness  or  desirableness  rests  the  question  of  vour 
kindness,  and  not  merely  on  the  fact  of  your  having  employed 
people  in  producing  it :  and  I  say  farther,  that  as  long  as  there 
are  cold  and  nakedness  in  the  land  around  you,  so  long-  there 
can  be  no  question  at  all  but  that  splendour  of  dress  is  a  crime. 
In  due  time,  when  we  have  nothing  better  to  set  people  to  work 
at,  it  may  be  right  to  let  them  make  lace  and  cut  jewels ;  but,  as 
long  as  there  are  any  who  have  no  blankets  for  their  beds,  and 
no  rags  for  their  bodies,  so  long  it  is  blanket-making  and  tailoring 
we  must  set  people  to  work  at-»not  lace. 

And  it  would  be  strange,  if  at  any  great  assembly  which,  while 
it  dazzled  the  young  and  the  thoughtless,  beguiled  the  gentler 
hearts  that  beat  beneath  the  embroidery,  with  a  placid  sensation 
of  luxurious  benevolence — as  if  by  all  that  they  wore  in  wavwar  1- 
ness  of  beauty,  comfort  had  been  first  given  to  the  distressed,  aiid 
aid  to  the  indigent ;  it  would  be  strange,  I  say,  if.  for  a  morar  nt, 
the  spirits  of  Truth  and  of  Terror,  which  walk  invisibly  among  the 
masques  of  the  earth,  would  lift  the  dimness  from  our  erring 
thoughts,  and  show  us  how — inasmuch  as  the  sums  exbausted  foi 


LECT.    I.]  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  4* 

that  magnificence  would  have  given  back  the  failing  breath  to 
many  an  unsheltered  outcast  on  moor  and  street — they  who  'weai 
it  have  literally  entered  into  partnership  with  Death  ;  and  dressed 
themselves  in  his  spoils.  Yes,  if  the  veil  could  be  lifted  not  only 
from  your  thoughts,  but  from  your  human  sight,  you  would  see — 
the  angels  do  see — on  those  gay  white  dresses  of  yours,  strange 
dark  spots,  and  crimson  patterns  that  you  knew  not  of — spots  of 
the  inextinguishable  red  that  all  the  seas  cannot  wash  away  ;  yes, 
and  among  the  pleasant  flowers  that  crown  your  fair  heads,  and 
a;low  on  your  wreathed  hair,  you  would  see  that  one  weed  was 
always  twisted  which  no  one  thought  of — the  grass  that  grows  on 
graves. 

It  was  not,  however,  this  last,  this  clearest  and  most  appal- 
ling view  of  our  subject,  that  I  intended  to  ask  you  to  take  this 
evening;  only  it  is  impossible  to  set  any  part  of  the  matter  in  its 
tnie  light,  until  we  go  to  the  root  of  it.  But  the  point  which  it 
is  our  special  business  to  consider  is,  not  whether  costliness  of 
dress  is  contrary  to  charity ;  but  whether  it  is  not  contrary  to 
mere  worldly  wisdom :  whether,  even  supposing  we  knew  that 
splendour  of  dress  did  not  cost  suffering  or  hunger,  we  might 
not  put  the  splendour  better  in  other  things  than  dress.  And, 
supposing  our  mode  of  dress  were  really  graceful  or  beautiful, 
this  might  be  a  very  doubtful  question;  for  I  believe  true 
nobleness  of  dress  to  be  an  important  means  of  education,  as  it 
certainly  is  a  necessity  to  any  nation  which  wishes  to  possess  living 
art,  concerned  with  portraiture  of  human  nature.  No  good  his- 
torical painting  ever  yet  existed,  or  ever  can  exist,  where  the 
dresses  of  the  people  of  the  time  are  not  beautiful :  and  had  it 
not  been  for  the  lovely  and  fantastic  dressing  of  the  13th  to 
the  16th  centuries,  neither  French,  nor  Florentine,  nor  Venetian 
art  could  have  risen  to  anything  like  the  rank  it  reached.  Still, 
even  then,  the  best  dressing  was  never  the  costliest ;  and  its  effect 
depended    much     more    on    its    beautiful    and,    in    oavly    tin.CA 


«6  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.   I 

mo  lest,  arrangement,  and  on  the  simple  and  lovely  masses  of  \U 
coiour,  than  on  gorgeousness  of  clasp  or  embroidery.  Whethei 
we  can  ever  return  to  any  of  those  more  perfect  types  of  form 
iS  questionaole ;  but  there  can  be  no  question,  that  all  the 
•noney  we  spend  on  the  forms  of  dress  at  present  worn,  is,  hc 
lar  as  any  good  purpose  is  concerned,  wholly  lost.  Mind,  in 
laying  this,  I  reckon  among  good  purposes  the  purpose  which 
voung  ladies  are  said  sometimes  to  entertain — of  being  mar- 
ried; but  they  would  be  married  quite  as  soon  (and  probably 
TO  wiser  and  better  husbands)  by  dressing  quietly  as  by  dressing 
brilliantly ;  and  I  believe  it  would  only  be  needed  to  lay  fairly 
and  largely  before  them  the  real  good  which  might  be  effected 
by  the  sums  they  spend  in  toilettes,  to  make  them  trust  at  once 
only  to  their  bright  eyes  and  braided  hair  for  all  the  mischief 
they  have  a  mind  to.  I  wish  we  could,  for  once,  get  the 
statistics  of  a  London  season.  There  was  much  complaining  talk 
m  Parliament  last  week  of  the  vast  sum  the  nation  has  given  for 
the  best  Paul  Veronese  in  Venice — £14,000  :  I  wonder  what  the 
nation  meanwhile  has  given  for  its  ball-dresses !  Suppose  we  could 
see  the  London  milliners'  bills,  simply  for  unnecessary  breadths  of 
slip  and  flounces,  from  April  to  July  ;  I  wonder  whether  £14,000 
would  cover  them.  But  the  breadths  of  slip  and  flounces  are  by 
this  time  as  much  lost  and  vanished  as  last  year's  snow;  only  they 
have  done  less  good  :  but  the  Paul  Veronese  will  last  for  centuries, 
if  we  take  care  of  it;  and  yet  we  grumble  at  the  price  given  for 
cne  painting,  while  no  one  grumbles  at  the  price  of  pride. 

Time  does  not  permit  me  to  go  into  any  farther  illustration  ol 
the  various  modes  in  which  we  build  our  statue  out  of  snow,  and 
waste  our  labour  on  things  that  vanish.  I  must  leave  you  to  fol 
low  out  the  subject  for  yourselves,  as  I  said  I  should,  and  proceed, 
in  our  next  lecture,  to  examine  the  two  other  branches  of  our  sub 
-ect,  namely,  how  to  accumulate  our  art,  and  how  to  distribute  it. 
But,  in   closing,  as  we  have  been  much  on  the  topic  of  good 


LECT.    I.]  II.    APPLICATION.  47 

government,  both  of  ourselves  and  others,  let  me  just  give  you 
one  more  illustration  of  what  it  moans,  from  that  old  art  of  which, 
next  evening,  I  shall  try  to  convince  you  that  the  value,  both 
moral  and  mercantile,  is  greater  than  we  usually  suppose. 

One  of  the  frescoes  by  Ambrozio  Lorenzetti,  in  the  town-hall 
:  f  Siena,  represents,  by  means  of  symbolical  figures,  the  principles 
of  Good  Civic  Government  and  of  Good  Government  in  general. 
The  figure  representing  this  noble  Civic  Government  is  enthroned, 
and  surrounded  by  figures  representing  the  Virtues,  variously  sup- 
porting or  administering  its  authority.  Now,  observe  what  work 
is  given  to  each  of  these  virtues.  Three  Avinged  ones — Faith, 
Hope,  and  Charity — surrounded  the  head  of  the  figure,  not  in 
mere  compliance  with  the  common  and  heraldic  laws  of  prece- 
dence among  Virtues,  such  as  we  moderns  observe  habitually,  but 
with  peculiar  purpose  on  the  part  of  the  painter.  Faith,  as  thus 
represented,  ruling  the  thoughts  of  the  Good  Governor,  does  not 
mean  merely  religious  faith,  understood  in  those  times  to  be  neces- 
sary to  all  persons — governed  no  less  than  governors — but  it 
means  the  faith  which  enables  work  to  be  carried  out  steadily,  in 
spite  of  adverse  appearances  and  expediencies ;  the  faith  in  great 
principles,  by  which  a  civic  ruler  looks  past  all  the  immediate 
checks  and  shadows  that  would  daunt  a  common  man,  knowing 
that  what  is  rightly  done  will  have  a  right  issue,  and  holding  his 
way  in  spite  of  pullings  at  his  cloak  and  whisperings  in  his  ear, 
enduring,  as  having  in  him  a  faith  which  is  evidence  of  things  un- 
f.een.  And  Hope,  in  like  manner,  is  here  not  the  heavenward  hope 
which  ought  to  animate  the  hearts  of  all  men  ;  but  she  attends  upon 
Good  Government,  to  show  that  al'  such  government  is  expectant  aa 
well  as  conservative;  that  if  it  ceases  to  be  hopeful  of  better 
things,  it  ceases  to  be  a  wise  guardian  of  present  things:  that  it 
ought  never,  as  long  as  the  world  lasts,  to  be  wholly  content  with 
any  existing  state  of  institution  or  possession,  but  to  be  hopeful 
fitill  of  more  wisdom  and  power;  not  clutching  at  it  restlessly  or 


48  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.  L 

hastily,  but  feeling  that  its  real  life  consists  in  steady  ascent  fiom 
high  to  higher :  conservative,  indeed,  and  jealously  conservative 
of  old  things,  but  conservative  of  them  as  pillars  not  as  pinnacles 
• — as  aids,  but  not  as  Idols ;  and  hopeful  chiefly,  and  active,  in 
times  of  national  trial  or  distress,  according  to  those  first  and 
notable  words  describing  the  queenly  nation.  "  She  riseth,  while 
it  is  yet  nigJitr  And  again,  the  vi^inged  Charity  which  is  atten- 
dant on  Good  Government  has,  in  this  fresco,  a  peculiar  office. 
Can  you  guess  what?  If  you  consider  the  character  of  contest 
which  so  often  takes  place  among  kings  for  their  crowns,  and  the 
selfish  and  tyrannous  means  they  commonly  take  to  aggrandize  or 
secure  their  powder,  you  will,  perhaps,  be  surprised  to  hear  that 
the  office  of  Charity  is  to  crown  the  King.  And  yet,  if  you  think 
of  it  a  little,  you  will  see  the  beauty  of  the  thought  which  sets  her 
in  this  function :  since  in  the  first  place,  all  the  authority  of  a 
good  governor  should  be  desired  by  him  only  for  the  good  of  his 
people,  so  that  it  is  only  Love  that  makes  him  accept 'or  guard  his 
crown  :  in  the  second  place,  his  chief  greatness  consists  in  the  ex- 
ercise of  this  love,  and  he  is  truly  to  be  revered  only  so  far  as  his 
acts  and  thoughts  are  those  of  kindness ;  so  that  Lov6  is  the  light 
of  his  crown,  as  well  as  the  giver  of  it :  lastly,  because  his  strength 
depends  on  the  affections  of  his  people,  and  it  is  only  their  love 
which  can  securely  crown  him,  and  for  ever.  So  that  Love  is  the 
strength  of  his  crown  as  well  as  the  light  of  it. 

Then,  surrounding  the  King,  or  in  various  obedience  to  him, 
appear  the  dependent  virtues,  as  Fortitude,  Temperance,  Truth, 
and  other  attendant  spirits,  of  all  which  I  cannot  now  give  ac- 
count, wnshing  you  only  to  notice  the  one  to  whom  are  entrusted 
the  guidance  and  administration  of  the  public  revenues.  Can  you 
guess  which  it  is  likely  to  be  ?  Charity,  you  would  have  thought, 
should  have  something  to  do  with  the  business ;  but  not  so,  for 
she  is  too  hot  to  attend  carefully  to  it.  Prudence,  perhaps,  you 
tlunk  of  in  the  next  p'ace.     No,  she  is  too  timid,  and  loses  oppor 


CECT.  1.1  n.    APPLICATION.  49 

tunities  in  making  up  her  mind.  Can  it  be  Liberality  then  f 
No:  Liberality  is  entrusted  with  some  small  sums;  but  she  is  a 
bad  accountant,  and  is  allowed  no  important  place  in  the  exche- 
quer. But  the  treasures  are  given  in  charge  to  a  virtue  of  which 
we  hear  too  little  in  modern  times,  as  distinct  from  others; 
Magnanimity :  largeness  of  heart :  not  softness  or  weakness  of 
lieart,  mind  you — but  capacity  of  heart — the  great  measuring 
virtue,  which  weighs  in  heavenly  balances  all  that  may  be  given, 
and  all  that  may  be  gained ;  and  sees  how  to  do  noblest  things  in 
noblest  ways:  which  of  two  goods  comprehends  and  therefore 
chooses  the  greatest :  which  of  two  personal  sacrifices  dares  and 
accepts  the  largest:  which,  out  of  the  avenues  of  beneficence, 
treads  always  that  which  opens  farthest  into  the  blue  fields  of 
futurity :  that  character,  in  fine,  which,  in  those  words  taken  by 
us  at  first  for  the  description  of  a  Queen  among  the  nations,  looks 
less  to  the  present  power  than  to  the  distant  promise ;  "  Strength 
and  honour  are  in  her  clothing, — and  she  shall  rejoice  in  tiub 

TO    00  ME." 


6C  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF   ART.  [j.KOT.    D 


LECTURE  II. 

Thb  heads  of  our  subject  which  remain  for  our  consideraiion 
this  evening  are,  you  will  remember,  the  accumulation  and  tlw 
distribution  of  works  of  art.  Our  complete  inquiry  fell  into  foui 
divisions — first,  how  to  get  our  genius ;  then,  how  to  apply  oui 
genius ;  then,  how  to  accumulate  its  results ;  and  lastly,  how  to 
distribute  them.  We  considered,  last  evening,  how  to  discovei 
and  apply  it ; — we  have  to-night  to  examine  the  modes  of  its 
preservation  and  distribution. 

Aud  now,  in  the  outset,  it  will  be  well  to  face  that  objection 
which  we  put  aside  a  little  while  ago;  namely,  that  perhaps  it  ia 
not  well  to  have  a  great  deal  of  good  art ;  and  that  it  should  not 
be  made  too  cheap. 

"  Nay,"  I  can  imagine  some  of  the  more  generous  among  yoi., 
exclaiming,  "  we  will  not  trouble  you  to  disprove  that  objection ; 
of  course  it  is  a  selfish  and  base  one :  good  art,  as  well  as  other 
good  things,  ought  to  be  made  as  cheap  as  possible,  and  put  as  far 
as  we  can  within  the  reach  of  everybody." 

Pardon  me,  I  am  not  prepared  to  admit  that.  I  rather  side 
with  the  selfish  objectors,- and  believe  that  art  ought  not  to  be 
made  cheap,  beyond  a  certain  point ;  for  the  amount  of  pleasure 
that  you  can  receive  from  any  great  work,  depends  wholly  on  the 
quantity  of  attention  and  energy  of  mind  you  can  bring  to  bear 
upon  it.  Now,  that  attention  and  energy  depend  much  more  on 
the  freshness  of  the  thing  than  you  would  at  all  suppose  ;  unless 
you  very  carefully  studied  the  movements  of  your  own  minds.  If 
vou  see  things  of  the  same  kind  and  of  equal  value  very  fi-e 


LECT.    II.  I  III.    ACCUMULATION.  51 

(jufcntly,  your  reverence  for  them  is  infallibly  diminished,  your 
powers  of  attention  get  gradually  wearied,  and  your  interest  and 
enthusiasm  worn  out ;  and  you  cannot  in  that  state  bring  to  any 
given  work  the  energy  necessary  to  enjoy  it.  If,  indeed,  the 
question  were  only  between  enjoying  a  great  many  pictures  each  a 
little,  or  one  picture  very  much,  the  sum  of  enjoyment  being  in 
each  case  the  same,  you  might  rationally  desire  to  possess  rather 
the  larger  quantity,  than  the  small ;  both  because  one  work  of  art 
always  in  some  sort  illustrates  another,  and  because  quantity 
diminishes  the  chances  of  destruction.  But  the  question  is  not  a 
merely  arithmetical  one  of  this  kind.  Your  fragments  of  broken 
admirations  will  not,  when  they  are  put  together,  make  up  one 
whole  admiration  ;  two  and  two,  in  this  case,  do  not  make  four, 
nor  anything  like  four.  Your  good  picture,  or  book,  or  work  oi 
art  of  any  kind,  is  always  in  some  degree  fenced  and  closed  about 
with  diflSculty.  You  may  think  of  it  as  of  a  kind  of  cocoa-nut,  with 
'eiy  often  rather  an  unseemly  shell,  but  good  milk  and  kernel 
inside.  Now,  if  you  possess  twenty  cocoa-nuts,  and  being  thirsty, 
go  impatiently  from  one  to  the  other,  giving  only  a  single  scratch 
with  the  point  of  your  knife  to  the  shell  of  each,  you  will  get  no 
milk  from  all  the  twenty.  But  if  you  leave  nineteen  of  them 
alone,  and  give  twenty  cuts  to  the  shell  of  one,  you  will  get 
through  it,  and  at  the  milk  of  it.  And  the  tendency  of  the 
human  mind  is  always  to  get  tired  before  it  has  made  its  twenty 
cuts ;  and  to  try  another  nut ;  and  moreover,  even  if  it  has  per- 
severance enough  to  crack  its  nuts,  it  is  sure  to  try  to  eat  too 
many,  and  so  choke  itself.  Hence,  it  is  wisely  appointed  for  us 
that  few  of  the  things  we  desire  can  be  had  without  considerable 
labour,  and  at  considerable  intervals  of  time.  We  cannot  gene- 
rally get  our  dinner  without  working  for  it,  and  that  gives  us  ap- 
petite for  it ;  we  cannot  get  our  holiday  without  waiting  for  it, 
and  that  gives  us  zest  for  it ;  and  we  ought  not  to  get  our  picture 
without  paying  for  it,  and  that  gives   IB  a  mind  to  look  at  it 


52  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.    II 

Nay,  I  will  even  go  so  far  as  to  say,  that  we  ought  not  to  get 
books  too  cheaply.  No  book,  I  believe,  is  ever  worth  half  so 
much  to  its  reader  as  one  that  has  been  coveted  for  a  year  at  a 
bookstall,  and  bought  out  of  saved  half-pence ;  and  perhaps  a  day 
or  two's  fasting.  That's  the  way  to  get  at  the  cream  of  a  book. 
And  I  should  say  more  on  this  matter,  and  protest  as  energetically 
as  I  could  against  the  plague  of  cheap  literature,  with  which  we 
are  just  now  afflicted,  but  that  I  fear  your  calling  me  to  order,  as 
being  unpractical,  because  I  don't  quite  see  my  way  at  present  to 
making  everybody  fast  for  their  books.  But  one  may  see  that  a 
thing  is  desirable  and  possible,  even  though  one  may  not  at  once 
know  the  best  way  to  it — and  in  my  island  of  Barataria,  when  I 
get  it  well  into  order,  I  assure  you  no  book  shall  be  sold  for  less 
than  a  pound  sterling ;  if  it  can  be  published  cheaper  than  that, 
the  surplus  shall  all  go  into  my  treasury,  and  save  my  subjects 
taxation  in  other  directions ;  only  people  really  poor,  who  cannot 
pay  the  pound,  shall  be  supplied  with  the  books  they  want  for 
nothing,  in  a  certain  limited  quantity.  I  haven't  made  up  my 
mind  about  the  number  yet,  and  there  are  several  other  points  in 
the  system  yet  unsettled ;  when  they  are  all  determined,  if  you 
will  allow  me,  I  will  come  and  give  you  another  lecture,  on  the 
political  economy  of  literature.* 

Meantime,  returning  to  our  immediate  subject,  I  say  to  my  gene- 
rous hearers,  who  want  to  shower  Titians  and  Turners  upon  us, 
like  falling  leaves,  "  Pictures  ought  not  to  be  too  cheap ;"  but  in 
much  stronger  tone  I  would  say  to  those  who  want  to  keep  up  the 
prices  of  pictorial  property,  that  pictures  ought  not  to  be  too  dear, 
that  is  to  say,  not  as  dear  as  they  are.  For,  as  matters  at  present 
stand,  it  is  wholly  impossible  for  any  man  in  the  ordinary  circum- 
stances of  English  life  to  possess  himself  of  a  piece  of  great  art 
A  modern  drawing  of  average  merit,  or  a  first-class  engraving 

'  See  note  6th  in  Addenda. 


LECT.    II.]  III.    ACCUMULATION.  63 

may  perhaps,  not  without  some  self-reproach,  be  purchased  out  Oj 
his  savings  by  a  man  of  narrow  income ;  but  a  satisfactory  exam- 
ple of  first-rate  art — master-hands'  work — is  wholly  out  of  bia 
reach.  And  we  are  so  accustomed  to  look  upon  this  as  the  natu- 
ral course  and  necessity  of  things,  that  we  never  set  ourselves  in 
any  wise  to  diminish  the  evil ;  and  yet  it  is  an  evil  perfectly  capa 
He  of  diminution.  It  is  an  evil  precisely  similar  in  kind  to  thai 
'which  existed  in  the  middle  ages,  respecting  good  books,  and 
which  everybody  then,  I  suppose,  thought  as  natural  as  we  do  now 
our  small  supply  of  good  pictures.  You  could  not  then  study  the 
work  of  a  great  historian,  or  great  poet,  any  more  than  you  can 
now  study  that  of  a  great  painter,  but  at  heavy  cost.  If  vou 
wanted  a  book,  you  had  to  get  it  written  out  for  you,  or  to  write 
"it  out  for  yourself.  But  printing  came,  and  the  poor  man  may 
read  his  Dante  and  his  Homer ;  and  Dante  and  Homer  are  none 
the  worse  for  that.  But  it  is  only  in  literature  that  private  per- 
sons of  moderate  fortune  can  possess  and  study  greatness:  they 
can  study  at  home  no  greatness  in  art ;  and  the  object  of  that 
accumulation  which  we  are  at  present  aiming  at,  as  our  third 
object  in  political  economy,  is  to  bring  great  art  in  some  degree 
within  the  reach  of  the  multitude  ;  and,  both  in  larger  and  more 
numerous  galleries  than  we  now  possess,  and  by  distribution, 
according  to  his  wealth  and  wish,  in  each  man's  home,  to  render 
the  influence  of  art  somewhat  correspondent  in  extent  to  that  of 
literature.  Here,  then,  is  the  subtle  balance  which  your  economist 
has  to  strike  :  to  accumulate  so  much  art  as  to  be  able  to  give  the 
whole  nation  a  supply  of  it,  according  to  its  need,  and  yet  to  regu- 
late its  distribution  so  that  there  shall  be  no  glut  of  it,  nor  contempt. 
A  difficult  balance,  indeed,  for  us  to  hold,  if  it  were  left  merely 
to  our  skill  to  poise  ;  but  the  just  point  between  poverty  and  pro- 
fusion has  been  fixed  for  us  accurately  by  the  wise  laws  of  Provi 
dence.  If  you  carefully  watch  for  all  the  genius  you  can  detect^ 
api)ly  it  to  good  service,  and  then  reverently  preserve  what  it  jjro 


54  POLITICAL    KCONOMY    OF   ART.  [lECT.    I- 

(luccs,  you  will  never  have  too  little  art ;  and  if,  on  tlie  othei 
hand,  yon  riover  force  an  artist  to  work  hurriedly,  for  dt.ily  bread, 
nor  imperfectly,  because  you  would  rather  have  showy  works  than 
complete  ones,  you  will  never  have  too  much.  Do  not  force  the 
multiplication  of  art,  and  you  will  not  have  it  too  cheap ;  do  not 
wantonly  destroy  it,  and  you  will  not  have  it  too  dear. 

"  But  who  wantonly  destroys  it  ?"  you  will  ask.  Why,  we  all 
do.  Perhaps  you  thought,  when  I  came  to  this  part  of  our  sub- 
ject, corresponding  to  that  set  forth  in  our  housewife's  economy 
by  the  "  keeping  her  embroidery  from  the  moth,"  that  I  was  going 
to  tell  you  only  how  to  take  better  care  of  pictures,  how  to  clean 
them,  and  varnish  them,  and  where  to  put  them  away  safely  when 
you  went  out  of  town.  Ah,  not  at  all.  The  utmost  I  have  to  ask 
of  you  is,  that  you  will  not  pull  them  to  pieces,  and  trample  them 
under  your  feet.  "  What,"  you  will  say,  "  when  do  we  do  such 
things  ?  Haven't  we  built  a  perfectly  beautiful  gallery  for  all  tlif, 
pictures  we  have  to  take  care  of?"  Yes,  you  have,  for  the  pic- 
tures which  are  definitely  sent  to  Manchester  to  be  taken  care  of. 
But  there  are  quantities  of  pictures  out  of  Manchester  which  it  is 
your  business,  and  mine  too,  to  take  care  of  no  less  than  of  these, 
and  which  we  are  at  this  moment  employing  ourselves  in  pulling 
to  pieces  by  deputy.  I  will  tell  you  what  they  are,  and  where 
they  are,  in  a  minute ;  only  first  let  me  state  one  more  of  those 
main  principles  of  political  economy  on  which  the  matter  hinges. 

I  must  begin  a  little  apparently  wide  of  the  mark,  and  ask  you 
to  reflect  if  there  is  any  way  in  which  we  waste  money  more  in 
England,  than  in  building  fine  tombs  ?  Our  respect  for  the  dead, 
when  they  are  just  dead,  is  something  wonderful,  and  the  way  wt 
show  it  more  wonderful  still.  We  show  it  with  black  feathers  and 
black  horses ;  we  show  it  with  black  dresses  and  bright  heraldries , 
we  show  it  with  costly  obelisks  and  sculptures  of  sorrow,  which 
B])oil  half  of  our  most  beautiful  cathedials.  We  show  it  with  fright- 
^1  gratings  and  vaults,  and  lids  of  dismal  stone,  in  the  midst  of  the 


LECT.    II.]  III.    ACCUMULATION.  55 

quiet  grass;  and  last,  not  least,  we  show  it  by  pennittiiig  ourselves 
to  tell  any  number  of  lies  we  tbiuk  amiable  or  credible,  in  the  epi- 
taph. This  feeling  is  common  to  the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich  ; 
and  we  all  know  how  many  a  poor  family  will  nearly  niin  them- 
selves, to  testify  their  respect  for  some  member  of  it  in  his  coffin, 
whom  they  never  much  cared  for  when  he  was  out  of  it ;  and  how 
often  it  happens  that  a  poor  old  woman  vvill  starve  herself  to  death, 
in  order  that  she  may  be  respectably  buried. 

Now,  this  being  one  of  the  most  complete  and  special  ways  ol 
wasting  money ; — no  money  being  less  productive  of  good,  or  of 
any  percentage  whatever,  than  that  which  we  shake  away  from  the 
ends  of  undertakers'  plumes — it  is  of  course  the  duty  of  all  good 
economists,  and  kind  persons,  to  prove  and  proclaim  continually, 
to  the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich,  that  respect  for  the  dead  is  not 
really  shown  by  laying  great  stones  on  them  to  tell  us  where  they 
are  laid ;  but  by  remembering  where  they  are  laid  without  a  stone 
to  help  us ;  trusting  them  to  the  sacred  grass  and  saddened  flowers ; 
and  still  more,  that  respect  and  love  are  shown  to  them,  not  by 
great  monuments  to  them  which  we  build  with  our  hands,  but  by 
letting  the  monuments  stand,  which  they  built  with  their  own. 
And  this  is  the  point  now  in  question. 

Observe,  there  are  two  great  reciprocal  duties  concerning  indus- 
try, constantly  to  be  exchanged  between  the  living  and  the  dead. 
We,  as  we  live  and  work,  are  to  be  always  thinking  of  thobe 
who  are  to  come  after  us ;  that  what  we  do  may  be  serviceable,  a? 
far  as  we  can  make  it  so,  to  them,  as  well  as  to  us.  Then,  when 
we  die,  it  is  the  duty  of  those  who  come  after  ns  to  accept  this 
work  of  ours  with  thanks  and  remembrance,  not  thrusting  it  aside 
or  tearing  it  down  the  moment  they  think  they  have  no  use  for  it 
Ard  each  generation  will  only  be  happy  or  powerful  to  the  pitch 
that  it  ought  to  be,  in  fulfilling  these  two  duties  to  the  Past  and 
the  Future.  Its  own  work  will  never  be  rightly  done,  even  fol 
itself — n(!vrr  good,  or  nnble,  or  pleasurable  to  its  own  eyes^  if  j< 


56  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECI.    11. 

does  not  prepare  it  also  for  tlie  eyes  of  generations  yet  to  come 
And  its  own  possessions  will  never  be  enougli  for  it,  and  its  own 
wisdom  never  enough  for  it,  unless  it  avails  itself  gratefully  and 
tenderly  of  the  treasures  and  the  wisdom  bequeathed  to  it  by  its 
ancestors. 

For,  be  assured,  that  all  the  best  things  and  treasures  of  this 
world  are  not  to  be  produced  by  each  generation  for  itself;  but  we 
are  all  intended,  not  to  carve  our  work  in  snow  that  will  melt,  but 
each  and  all  of  us  to  be  continually  rolling  a  great  white  gathering 
snowball,  higher  and  higher — larger  and  larger — along  the  Alps  oi 
human  power.  Thus  the  science  of  nations  is  to  be  accumulative 
from  father  to  son  :  each  learning  a  little  more  and  a  little  more ; 
each  receiving  all  that  was  known,  and  adding  its  own  gain  :  the 
history  and  poetry  of  nations  are  to  be  accumulative ;  each  genera- 
tion treasuring  the  history  and  the  songs  of  its  ancestors,  adding 
Its  own  history  and  its  own  songs ;  and  the  art  of  nations  is  to  be 
accumulative,  just  as  science  and  history  are;  the  work  of  living 
men  not  superseding,  but  building  itself  upon  the  work  of  the  past. 
Nearly  every  great  and  intellectual  race  of  the  world  has  pro- 
duced, at  every  period  of  its  career,  an  art  with  some  peculiar  and 
precious  character  about  it,  wholly  unattainable  by  any  other  race, 
and  at  any  other  time ;  and  the  intention  of  Providence  concern- 
ing that  art,  is  evidently  that  it  should  all  grow  together  into  one 
mighty  temple  ;  the  rough  stones  and  the  smooth  all  finding  theii 
place,  and.  rising,  day  by  day,  in  richer  and  higher  pinnacles  to 
heaven. 

Now,  just  fancy  what  a  position  the  world,  considered  as  one 
great  workroom — one  great  factory  in  the  form  of  a  globe — would 
liave  been  in  by  this  time,  if  it  had  in  the  least  understood  this 
duty,  or  been  capable  of  it.  Fancy  what  we  should  have  had 
around  us  now,  if,  instead  of  quarrelling  and  fighting  over  their 
work,  the  nations  had  aided  each  other  in  their  work,  or  if  even 
in  th  eir  conquests,  instead  of  effacing  the  memorials  of  those  they 


LECr.    II.J  III.    ACCUMULATION.  S*) 

succeeded  and  subdued,  they  had  guarded  the  spoils  of  theii  vic- 
tories. Fancy  what  Europe  would  be  now,  if  the  delicate  statute 
and  temples  of  the  Greeks, — if  the  broad  roads  and  massy  "vallfi 
of  the  Romans, — if  the  noble  and  pathetic  architecture  of  the 
middle  ages,  had  not  been  ground  to  dust  by  mere  human  rage, 
Vou  ta-k  of  the  scythe  of  Time,  and  the  tooth  of  Time  :  I  tell 
you.  Time  is  scythelcss'and  toothless;  it  is  we  who  gnaw  like  the 
worm — we  who  smite  like  the  scythe.  It  is  ourselves  who  abolish 
— ourselves  who  consume  :  we  are  the  mildew,  and  the  flame,  and 
the  soul  of  man  is  to  its  own  work  as  the  moth,  that  frets  when  it 
cannot  fly,  and  as  the  hidden  flame  that  blasts  where  it  cannot 
illumine.  All  these  lost  treasures  of  human  intellect  have  beer 
wholly  destroyed  by  human  industry  of  destruction ;  the  marble 
would  have  stood  its  two  thousand  years  as  well  in  the  polished 
statue  as  in  the  Parian  cliff;  but  we  men  have  ground  it  to  pow- 
der, and  mixed  it  with  our  own  ashes.  The  walls  and  the  ways 
would  have  stood — it  is  we  who  have  left  not  one  stone  upon  an- 
other, and  restored  its  pathlessneas  to  the  desert ;  the  great  cathe- 
drals of  old  religion  would  have  stood — it  is  we  who  have  dashed 
down  the  carved  work  with  axes  and  hammers,  and  bid  the 
mountain-grass  bloom  upon  the  pavement,  and  the  sea-winds 
chaunt  in  the  galleries. 

You  will  perhaps  think  all  this  was  somehow  necessary  for  the 
development  of  the  human  race.  I  cannot  stay  now  to  dispute 
that,  though  I  would  willingly ;  but  do  you  think  it  is  still  neces- 
sary for  that  development?  Do  you  think  that  in  this  nineteenth 
century  it  is  still  necessary  for  the  European  nations  to  turn  all 
ihe  places  where  their  principal  art-treasures  are  into  battle- 
ticlils '?  For  that  is  what  they  are  doing  even  while  I  speak;  the 
fficat  firm  of  the  world  is  managing  its  business  at  this  moment, 
just  as  it  has  done  in  past  times.  Imagire  what  would  be  the 
thnving  circumstances  of  a  iruinufacturer  of  some  delicate  pro- 
duce— suppose  glass,  or  china — in  whose  workshop  and  exhibitior 

3* 


68  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART,  |  LECT.    II 

rooms  all  tbe  workmen  and  clerks  begar.  fighting  at  least  once  a 
day,  first  blowing  off  the  steam,  and  breaking  all  the  machineij 
they  could  reach ;  and  then  making  fortresses  of  all  the  cup 
boards,  and  attacking  and  defending  the  show-tables,  the  victori- 
ous party  finally  throwing  everything  they  could  get  hold  of  out 
of  the  window,  by  way  of  showing  their  triumph,  and  the  poor 
manufacturer  picking  up  and  putting  away  at  last  a  cup  here  and 
a  handle  there.  A  fine  prosperous  business  that  would  be,  would 
it  not?  and  yet  that  is  precisely  the  way  the  great  manufacturing 
firm  of  the  world  carries  on  its  business. 

It  has  so  arranged  its  political  squabbles  for  the  last  six  or  seven 
hundred  years,  that  no  one  of  them  could  be  fought  out  but  in  the 
midst  of  its  most  precious  art ;  and  it  so  arranges  them  to  this 
day.  For  example,  if  I  were  asked  to  lay  my  finger,  in  a  map  of 
the  world,  on  the  spot  of  the  world's  surface  which  contained  at 
this  moment  the  most  singular  concentration  of  art-teaching  and 
art-treasure,  I  should  lay  it  on  the  name  of  the  town  of  Verona. 
Other  cities,  indeed,  contain  more  works  of  carriageable  art,  but 
none  contain  so  much  of  the  glorious  local  art,  and  of  the  springs 
and  sources  of  art,  which  can  by  no  means  be  made  subjects  of 
package  or  porterage,  nor,  I  grieve  to  say,  of  salvage.  Verona 
possesses,  in  the  first  place,  not  the  largest,  but  the  most  perfect 
and  intelligible  Roman  amphitheatre  that  exists,  still  unbroken  in 
circle  of  step,  and  strong  in  succession  of  vault  and  arch  :  it  con- 
tains minor  Roman  monuments,  gateways,  theatres,  baths,  wrecks 
of  temples,  which  give  the  streets  of  its  suburbs  a  character  of 
antiquity  unexampled  elsewhere,  except  in  Rome  itself.  But  it 
contains,  in  the  next  place,  what  Rome  does  not  contain — perfect 
examples  of  the  great  twelfth-century  Lombardic  architecture, 
which  was  the  root  of  all  the  mediaeval  art  of  Italy,  without  which 
no  Giottos,  no  Angelicos,  no  Raphaels  would  have  been  possible  ; 
it  contains  that  architecture,  not  in  rude  forms,  but  in  the  most 
Derfect  and  loveliest  types  it  ever  attained — contains  those,  not  ir 


LECT.    II.]  ni.    ACCUMULATION.  59 

ruins,  nor  ir.  altered  and  hardly  deciplierable  fragments,  bnt  ir 
churches  perfect  from  porch  to  apse,  with  all  their  carving  fresh, 
their  pillars  firm,  their  joints  unloosened.  Besides  these,  it 
includes  examples  of  the  great  thirteenth  and  fourteenth-century 
Gothic  of  Italy,  not  merely  perfect,  but  elsewhere  unrivalled.  At 
Rome,  the  Roman — at  Pisa,  the  Lombard,  architecture  may  bo 
seen  in  greater  or  in  equal  nobleness ;  but  not  at  Rome,  nor  Pisa, 
nor  Florence,  nor  in  any  city  of  the  world,  is  there  a  great  medi- 
feval  Gothic  like  the  Gothic  of  Verona.  Elsewhere,  it  is  either 
less  pure  in  type  or  less  lovely  in  completion  :  only  at  Verona  ma) 
you  see  it  in  the  simplicity  of  its  youthful  power,  and  the  tender- 
ness of  its  accomplished  beauty.  And  Verona  possesses,  in  the 
last  place,  the  loveliest  Renaissance  architecture  of  Italy,  not  dis 
turbed  by  pride,  nor  defiled  by  luxury,  but  vising  in  fair  fulfilment 
of  domestic  service,  serenity  of  effortless  grace,  and  modesty  of 
home  seclusion ;  its  richest  woi'k  given  to  the  windows  that  open 
oil  the  narrowest  streets  and  most  silent  gardens.  All  this  she 
possesses,  in  the  midst  of  natural  scenery  such  as  assuredly  exists 
nowhere  else  in  the  habitable  globe — a  wild  Alpine  river  foaming 
at  her  feet,  from  whose  shores  the  rocks  rise  in  a  great  crescent, 
dark  with  cypress,  and  misty  with  olive:  inimitably,  from  before 
her  southern  gates,  the  tufted  plains  of  Italy  sweep  and  fade  in 
golden  light ;  around  her,  north  and  west,  the  Alps  crowd  in 
crested  troops,  and  the  winds  of  Benacus  bear  to  her  the  coolness 
of  their  snows. 

And  this  is  the  city — such,  and  possessing  such  things  as  these 
— at  whose  gates  the  decisive  battles  of  Italy  are  fought  continu- 
ally :  three  days  her  towers  trembled  with  the  echo  of  the  caTinon 
of  Areola  ;  heaped  pebbles  of  the  Mincio  divide  her  fields  to  this 
hour  with  lines  of  broken  rampart,  whence  the  tide  of  war  rolled 
back  to  Novara ;  and  now  on  that  crescent  of  her  eastern  cliffs, 
whence  tl.e  full  moon  used  to  rise  through  the  bars  of  th« 
cypresses   in  her.  burning  summer  twilights,  touching  witli    soil 


60  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    AKT.  [lECT.    II. 

increase  of  silver  light  the  rosy  marbles  of  her  oalconies,  along 
the  ridge  of  that  _encoinp,ussiiig  rock,  other  circles  are  increasing 
now,  white  and  pale ;  walled  towers  of  cruel  strength,  sable- 
spotted  with  cannon-courses.  I  tell  you,  I  have  seen,  when  the 
tli ...iderclouds  came  down  on  those  Italian  hills,  and  all  their  craga 
were  dipped  in  the  dark,  terrible  purple,  as  if  the  winepress  of  the 
wrath  of  God  had  stained  their  mountain-raiment — I  have  seen  the 
hail  fall  in  Italy  till  the  forest  branches  stood  stripped  and  bare  as 
if  blasted  by  tiie  locust ;  but  the  white  hail  never  fell  from  those 
clouds  of  heaven  as  the  black  hail  will  fall  from  the  clouds  of  hell, 
if  ever  one  breath  of  Italian  life  stirs  again  in  the  streets  of 
Verona. 

Sad  as  you  will  feel  this  to  be,  I  do  not  say  that  you  can  directly 
prevent  it ;  you  cannot  drive  the  Austrians  ont  of  Italy,  nor  pre- 
vent them  from  building  forts  where  they  choose,  but  I  do  say,* 

*  The  reader  can  hardly  but  remember  Mrs.  Browning's  beautiful  appea] 
for  Italy,  made  on  the  occasion  of  the  first  great  Exhibition  of  Art  ie 
England : — 

0  Magi  of  the  east  and  of  the  west, 

Y"our  incense,  gold,  and  myrrh  are  excellent  1— 

What  gifts  for  Christ,  then,  bring  ye  with  the  rest  ? 

Your  hands  have  worked  well.    Is  your  courage  spent 

In  handwork  only  ?     Have  you  nothing  best, 

Which  generous  souls  may  perfect  and  present, 

And  He  shall  thank  the  givers  for  ?   no  light 

Of  teaching,  liberal  nations,  for  the  poor. 

Who  sit  in  darkness  when  it  is  not  night  ? 

No  cure  for  wicked  children  ?    Christ, — no  cure, 

No  help  for  women,  sobbing  out  of  sight 

Because  men  made  the  laws  ?  no  brothel-lure 

Burnt  out  by  popular  lightnings?     Hast  thou  found 

No  remedy,  my  England,  for  such  woes  ? 

No  outlet,  Austria,  for  the  scourged  and  bocnd. 

No  oall  back  for  the  exiled  ?  no  repose, 

Biisi<<.a,  for  knouted  Poles  worked  und«r  ground 


LECT.    II.]  III.    ACCUMULATION.  61 

that  you,  and  I,  and  all  of  us,  ought  to  be  both  acting  and  feeling 
with  a  fiill  knowledge  and  understanding  of  these  things,  and  that, 
without  trying  to  excite  revolutions  or  weaken  governments,  we 
may  give  our  own  thoughts  and  help,  so  as  in  a  measure  to  prevent 
needless  destruction.  We  should  do  this,  if  we  only  realized  the 
thing  thoroughly.  You  drive  out  day  by  day  through  your  own 
pretty  suburbs,  and  you  think  only  of  making,  with  what  money 
you  have  to  spare,  your  gateways  handsomer,  and  your  carriage- 
drives  wider — and  your  drawing-rooms  more  splendid,  having  a 
vague  notion  that  you  are  all  the  while  patronizing  and  advancing 
art,  and  you  make  no  effort  to  conceive  the  fact,  that  within  a  few 
hours'  journey  of  you,  there  are  gateways  and  drawing-rooms 
which  might  just  as  well  be  yours  as  these,  all  built  already;  gate- 
ways built  by  the  greatest  masters  of  sculpture  that  ever  struck 
marble  ;  drawing-rooms  painted  by  Titian  and  Veronese ;  and  you 
won't  accept,  nor  save  these  as  they  are,  but  you  will  rather  fetch 
the  house-painter  from  over  the  way,  and  let  Titian  and  Veronese 
house  the  rats.  "Yes,"  of  course,  you  answer;  "we  want  nice 
houses  here,  not  houses  in  Verona.  What  should  we  do  with 
houses  in  VeroTia?"  And  I  answer,  do  precisely  what  you  do 
with  the  most  expensive  part  of  your  possessions  here  :  take  pride 
m  them-— only  a  noble  pride.     You  know  well,  when  you  exanaine 

And  gentle  ladies  bleached  among  the  snowa  ? 

No  mercy  for  the  slave,  America  ? 

No  hope  for  Rome,  free  France,  chivalric  France  ? 

A  las,  groat  nations  have  great  shames,  I  say. 

No  pity,  0  world  I  no  tender  utterance 

Of  benediction,  and  prayers  stretched  this  way 

For  poor  Itaha,  baffled  by  mischance? 

0  gracious  nations,  give  some  ear  to  tue  I 

You  all  go  to  your  Fau",  and  I  am  one 

"Who  at  the  roadside  of  humanity 

Beseech  your  alms, — God's  justice  to  be  dono^ 

So  prosper  1 


62  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT,    II 

your  own  liearts,  that  the  greater  part  of  the  sums  you  spend  on 
possessions  are  spent  for  pride.  Why  are  your  carriages  nicely 
painted  and  finished  outside  ?  You  don't  see  the  outsides  as  you 
sit  in  them — the  outsides  are  for  other  people  to  see.  Why  are 
your  exteriors  of  houses  so  well  finished,  your  furniture  so  polished 
a  ad  costly,  but  for  other  people  to  see  ?  You  are  just  as  comfort- 
able yourselves,  writing  on  your  old  friend  of  a  desk,  with  the 
white  cloudings  in  his  leather,  and  using  the  light  of  a  window 
which  is  nothing  but  a  hole  in  the  brick  wall.  And  all  that  ia 
desirable  to  be  done  in  this  matter,  is  merely  to  take  pride  in  pre- 
serving great  art,  instead  of  in  producing  mean  art ;  pride  in  the 
possession  of  precious  and  enduring  things,  a  little  way  off,  instead 
of  slight  and  perishing  things  near  at  hand.  You  know,  in  old 
English  times,  our  kings  liked  to  have  lordships  and  dukedoms 
abroad,  and  why  should  not  you,  merchant  princes,  like  to  have 
lordships  and  estates  abroad?  Believe  me,  rightly  understood, 
it  would  be  a  prouder,  and  in  the  full  sense  of  o*ar  English 
word,  more  "respectable"  thing  to  be  lord  of  a  palace  at  Ve- 
rona, or  of  a  cloister  full  of  frescos  at  Florence,  than  to  have  a 
file  of  servants  dressed  in  the  finest  liveries  that  ever  tailor 
stitched,  as  long  as  would  reach  from  here  to  Bolton : — yes,  and  a 
prouder  thing  to  send  people  to  travel  in  Italy,  who  would  have 
to  say  every  now  and  then,  of  some  fair  piece  of  art,  "  Ah  !  this 
was  kept  here  for  us  by  the  good  people  of  Manchester,"  than  to 
bring  them  travelling  all  the  way  here,  exclaiming  of  your  various 
art  treasures,  "These  were  brought  here  f(«"  us  (not  altogethei 
without  harm)  by  the  good  people  of  Man'licster."  "Ah!"  but 
you  say,  "  the  Art  Treasures  Exhibition  will  pay ;  but  Veronese 
palaces  won't."  Pardon  me.  They  would  pay,  less  directly,  but 
far  more  richly  Do  you  suppose  it  is  in  the  long  run  good  for 
Manchester,  or  good  for  England,  that  the  Continent  should  be  in 
the  state  it  is  ?  Do  you  think  the  perpetual  fear  of  revolution,  or 
the  perpetual  repression  of  thought  and  energy  that  clouds  and 


LEOT.    II.J  III.    ACCUMULATION.  '  t)3 

encumbers  the  nations  of  Europe,  is  eventually  profitable  {or  us  ? 
Were  we  any  the  better  of  the  course  of  affairs  in  '48 ;  or  has  the 
stabling  of  the  dragoon  horses  in  the  great  houses  of  Italy,  any 
distinct  eff'ect  in  the  promotion  of  the  cotton-trade  ?  Not  so.  But 
eveiy  stake  that  you  could  hold  in  the  stability  of  the  Continent, 
and  every  effort  that  you  could  make  to  give  example  of  English 
habits  and  principles  on  the  Continent,  and  every  kind  deed  that 
you  could  do  in  relieving  distress  and  preventing  despair  on  the 
Continent,  would  have  tenfold  reaction  on  the  prosperity  of 
England,  and  open  and  urge,  in  a  thousand  unforeseen  directions, 
the  sluices  of  commerce  and  the  springs  of  industry. 

I  could  press,  if  I  chose,  both  these  motives  upon  you,  of  pride 
and  self-interest  with  more  force,  but  these  are  not  motives  which 
ought  to  be  urged  upon  you  at  all.  The  only  motive  that  I  ought 
to  put  before  you  is  simply  that  it  would  be  right  to  do  this ;  that 
the  holding  of  property  abroad,  and  the  personal  efforts  of  English- 
men to  redeem  the  condition  of  foreign  nations,  are  among  the 
most  direct  pieces  of  duty  which  our  wealth  renders  incumbent 
upon  us.  I  do  not — and  in  all  truth  and  deliberateness  I  say  this 
— I  do  not  know  anything  more  ludicrous  among  the  self-decep- 
tions of  well-meaning  people  than  their  notion  of  patriotism,  as 
requiring  them  to  limit  their  efforts  to  the  good  of  their  own 
•ountry; — the  notion  that  charity  is  a  geographical  virtue,  and 
that  what  it  is  holy  and  righteous  to  do  for  people  on  one  bank 
of  a  river,  it  is  quite  improper  and  unnatural  to  do  for  people  on 
the  other.  It  will  be  a  wonderful  thing,  some  day  or  other,  for 
the  Christian  world  to  remember,  that  it  went  on  thinking  for  two 
thousand  years  that  neighbours  were  neighbours  at  Jerusalem,  but 
not  at  Jericho;  a  wonderful  thing  for  us  English  to  reflect,  in 
after-years,  how  long  it  was  before  we  could  shake  hands  with 
anybody  across  that  shallow  salt  wash,  which  the  very  chalk-dust 
of  its  two  shores  whitens  from  Folkstone  to  Amlleteuse. 

Nor  ought  the  motive  of  gratitude,  as  well  as  that  of  Mercy,  tf 


(34  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.    11, 

be  without  its  influence  on  you,  who  have  been  tlie  first  to  ask  to 
see,  and  the  first  to  show  to  us,  the  treasures  which  this  poor  lost 
Italy  has  given  to  England.  Remember  all  these  things  that 
delight  you  hero  were  hers— hers  either  in  fact  or  in  teaching; 
hers,  in  fact,  are  all  the  most  powerful  and  most  touching  paintings 
of  old  time  that  now  glow  upon  your  walls ;  hers  m  teaching  are 
all  the  best  and  greatest  of  descendant  souls — your  Reynolds  and 
your  Gainsborough  never  could  have  painted  but  for  Venice ;  and 
the  energies  which  have  given  the  only  true  life  to  your  existing 
art  were  first  stirred  by  voices  of  the  dead,  that  haunted  the 
Sacred  Field  of  Pisa. 

Well,  all  these  motives  for  some  definite  course  of  action  on 
our  part  towards  foreign  countries  rest  upon  very  serious  facts; 
too  serious,  perhaps  you  will  think,  to  be  interfered  with ;  for  we 
are  all  of  us  in  the  habit  of  leaving  great  things  alone,  as  if  Pro- 
vidence would  mind  them,  and  attending  ourselves  only  to  little 
things  which  we  know,  practically.  Providence  doesn't  mind  unless 
we  do.  We  are  ready  enough  to  give  care  to  the  growing  of 
pines  and  lettuces,  knowing  that  they  don't  grow  Providentially 
sweet  or  large  unless  we  look  after  them;  but  we  don't  give 
any  care  to  the  good  of  Italy  or  Germany,  because  we  think  that 
they  will  grow  Providentially  happy  without  any  of  our  med- 
dling. 

Let  us  leave  the  great  things,  then,  and  think  of  little  things; 
not  of  the  dei^truction  of  whole  provinces  in  war,  which  it  may 
not  be  any  business  of  ours  to  prevent ;  but  of  the  destruction  of 
pool  little  pictures  in  -peace,  from  which  it  surely  would  not  be 
much  out  of  our  way  to  save  them.  You  know  I  said,  just  now, 
we  were  all  of  us  engaged  in  pulling  pictures  to  pieces  by  deputy, 
and  you  did  not  believe  me.  Consider,  then,  this  similitude  of 
ourselves.  Su])pose  you  saw  (as  I  doubt  not  you  often  do  see)  a 
prudent  and  kind  young  lady  sitting  at  work,  in  the  corner  of  a 
quiet  room,  knitting  comforters  for  her  cousins,  and  that  just  out 


LECr.    II.J  III.    ACCUMULATIOX.  65 

side,  in  the  hull,  you  saw  a  cat  and  her  kittens  at  play  among  the 
family  picturcfi;  amusing  themselves  especially  wi.h  the  best 
Vandykes,  by  getting  on  the  tops  of  the  frames,  and  then  scraia 
bling  down  the  canvasses  by  their  claws ;  and  on  some  one' 
informing  the  young  lady  of  these  proceedings  of  the  cat  and 
kittens,  suppose  she  answ-ered  that  it  wasn't  her  cat,  but  Iter 
Bister's,  and  the  pictures  weren't  hers,  but  her  uncle's,  and  she 
couldn't  leave  her  work,  for  she  had  to  make  so  many  pairs  of 
comforters  before  dinner.  Would  you  not  say  that  the  prudent 
and  kind  young  lady  was,  on  the  whole,  answerable  for  the  addi- 
tional touches  of  claw  on  the  Vandykes 5  Now,  that  is  precisely 
what  we  prudent  and  kind  English  are  doing,  only  on  a  larger 
scale.  Here  we  sit  in  Manchester,  hard  at  work,  very  properly, 
making  comforters  for  our  cousins  all  over  the  world.  Just  out- 
side there  in  the  hall — that  beautiful  marble  hall  of  Italy — the 
cats  and  kittens  and  monkeys  arc  at  play  among  the  pictures  :  I 
assure  you,  in  the  course  of  the  fifteen  years  in  which  I  have 
been  working  in  those  places  in  which  the  most  precious  remnants 
of  European  art  exist,  a  sensation,  whether  I  would  or  no,  was 
gradually  made  distinct  and  deep  in  my  mind,  that  I  was  living 
and  working  in  the  midst  of  a  den  of  monkeys ; — sometimes  ami- 
able and  affectionate  monkeys,  with  all  manner  of  winning  ways 
and  kind  intentions ; — more  frequently  selfish  and  malicious  mon- 
keys, but,  whatever  their  disposition,  squabbling  continually  about 
nuts,  and  the  best  places  on  the  barren  sticks  of  trees;  and 
that  all  this  monkeys'  den  was  filled,  by  mischance,  with  precious 
pictures,  and  the  witty  and  wilful  beasts  were  always  wrapping 
themselves  up  and  going  to  sleep  in  pictures,  or  tearing  holes  in 
them  to  grin  through;  or  tasting  them  and  spitting  them  out 
agani,  or  twisting  thcin  up  into  ropes  and  making  swings  of  them  ; 
and  that  sometimes  only,  by  watching  one's  opportunity,  and  bear- 
ing a  scratch  or  a  bite,  one  could  rescue  the  corner  of  a  Tin- 
torc-t,  or  Paul  Veronese,  and    push  it   throug-li  the    bars  into  » 


66  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF   ART.  [lECT.   II, 

place  of  safety.  Literally,  I  assure  you,  this  was,  and  this  is,  the 
fixed  impression  on  my  mind  of  the  state  of  matters  in  Italy 
And  see  how.  The  professors  of  art  in  Italy,  having  long  fol- 
lowed a  method  of  study  peculiar  to  themselves,  have  at  last 
arrived  at  a  form  of  art  peculiar  to  themselves;  very  different 
from  that  which  was  arrived  at  by  Correggio  and  Titian.  Natu- 
rally, the  professors  like  their  own  form  the  best;  and,  as  tht 
old  pictures  are  generally  not  so  startling  to  the  eye  as  the 
modern  ones,  the  dukes  and  counts  who  possess  them,  and  who 
like  to  see  their  galleries  look  new  and  fine  (and  are  persuaded 
also  that  a  celebrated  chef-d'oeuvre  ought  always  to  catch  the  eye 
at  a  quarter  of  a  mile  off),  believe  the  professors  who  tell  them 
their  sober  pictures  are  quite  faded,  and  good  for  nothing,  and 
should  all  be  brought  bright  again ;  and  accordingly,  give  the 
sober  pictures  to  the  professors,  to  be  put  right  by  rules  of  art. 
Then,  the  professors  repaint  the  old  pictures  in  all  the  princi- 
pal places,  leaving  perhaps  only  a  bit  of  background"  to  set  ofl 
their  own  work.  And  thus  the  professors  come  to  be  generally 
figured  in  my  mind,  as  the  monkeys  who  tear  holes  in  the 
pictures,  to  grin  through.  Then  the  picture-dealers,  who  live  by 
the  pictures,  cannot  sell  them  to  the  English  in  their  old  and  pure 
state ;  all  the  good  work  must  be  covered  with  new  paint,  and  var- 
nished so  as  to  look  like  one  of  the  professorial  pictures  in  the 
great  gallery,  before  it  is  saleable.  And  thus  the  dealers  come  to 
be  imaged,  in  my  mind,  as  the  monkeys  who  make  ropes  of 
tlie  pictures,  to  swing  by.  Then,  every  now  and  then,  in  some  old 
stable,  or  wine-cellar,  or  timber-shed,  behind  some  forgotten  vats 
or  faggots,  somebody  finds  a  fresco  of  Perugino's  or  Giotto's, 
but  doesn't  think  much  of  it,  and  has  no  idea  of  havi  ig  people 
coming  into  his  cellar,  or  being  obliged  to  move  his  faggots ;  and 
80  he  whitewashes  the  fresco,  and  puts  the  faggots  back  again  ; 
and  these  kind  of  persons,  therefore,  come  generally  to  be  imaged 
n   m}'  mind,  as  the  monkeys  who  taste  the  pictures,  and  spit 


LECT.    I].]  in.    ACCUMULATION.  0*7 

them  out,  not  finding  tliem  nice.  While,  finally,  the  squabbling 
for  nuts  and  apples  (called  in  Italy  "  bella  ^iberta ")  goes  on  all 
day  long. 

Now,  all  this  might  soon  be  put  an  end  to,  if  we  English,  who 
are  so  fond  of  travelling  in  the  body,  would  also  travel  a  little  in 
soul :  We  think  it  a  great  triumph  to  get  our  packages  and  our 
persons  carried  at  a  fast  pace,  but  we  never  take  the  slightest 
trouble  to  put  any  pace  into  our  perceptions ;  we  stay  usually  at 
home  in  thought,  or  if  we  ever  mentally  see  the  world,  it  is  at  the 
old  stage-coach  or  waggon  rate.  Do  but  consider  what  an  odd 
sight  it  would  be,  if  it  were  only  quite  clear  to  you  how  things  are 
really  going  on — how,  here  in  England,  we  are  making  enormous 
and  expensive  eflforts  to  produce  new  art  of  all  kinds,  knowing  and 
confessing  all  the  while_  that  the  greater  part  of  it  is  bad,  but 
struggling  still  to  produce  new  patterns  of  wall-papers,  and  new 
shapes  of  tea-pots,  and  new  pictures,  and  statues,  and  architecture ; 
and  pluming  and  cackling  if  ever  a  tea-pot  or  a  picture  has  the 
least  good  in  it ; — all  the  while  taking  no  thought  whatever  of  the 
best  possible  pictures,  and  statues,  and  wall-patterns  already  in 
existence,  which  require  nothing  but  to  be  taken  common  care  o^ 
and  kept  from  damp  and  dust :  but  we  let  the  walls  fall  that 
Giotto  patterned,  and  the  canvasses  rot  that  Tintoret  painted,  and 
the  architecture  be  dashed  to  pieces  that  St.  Louis  built,  while  we 
are  furnishing  our  drawing-rooms  with  prize  upholstery,  and 
writing  accounts  of  our  handsome  warehouses  to  the  country 
[capers.  Don't  think  I  use  my  words  vaguely  or  generally :  I 
sptiak  of  literal  facts.  Giotto's  frescos  at  Assisi  are  perishing  at 
this  moment  for  want  of  decent  care  ;  Tintoret's  pictures  in  San 
Sebastian  at  Venice,  are  at  this  instant  rotting  piecemeal  into  grey 
rags;  St.  Louis's  chapel,  at  Carcassonne,  is  at  this  moment  lying 
in  shattered  fragments  in  the  market-place.  And  here  we  are  all 
cawing  and  crowing,  poor  little  half-fledged  daws  as  we  arc,  about 
the   pretty    stitiks  and   wool  in  our  own   nests.     There's  hardly 


68  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lEOT.    II 

a  day  passes,  wlien  I  am  at  home,  but  I  get  a  letter  from  some 
well-meaning  country  clergyman,  deeply  anxious  abcut  the  state 
of  his  parish  church,  and  breaking  his  heart  to  get  money  together 
that  ho  may  hold  up  some  wretched  remnant  of  Tudor  tracery, 
with  one  niche  in  the  corner  and  no  statue — when  all  the  while 
the  mightiest  piles  of  religious  architecture  and  so'olpture  that  evei 
file  world  saw  are  being  blasted  and  withered  away,  without  one 
glance  of  pity  or  regret.  The  country  clergyman  does  not  care 
for  them — he  has  a  sea-sick  imagination  that  cannot  cross  channel 
What  is  it  to  him,  if  the  angels  of  Assisi  fade  from  its  vaults,  or 
the  queens  and  kings  of  Chartres  fall  from  their  pedestals  ?  They 
are  not  in  his  parish. 

"  What !"  you  will  say,  "  are  we  not  to  produce  any  new  art 
nor  take  care  of  our  parish  churches  ?"  "  No,  certainly  not,  until 
you  have  taken  proper  care  of  the  art  you  have  got  already,  and 
of  the  best  churches  out  of  the  parish.  Your  first  and  proper 
standing  is  not  as  churchwardens  and  parish  overseers,  in  an  Eng- 
lish county,  but  as  members  of  the  great  Christian  community  of 
Europe.  And  as  members  of  that  community  (in  which  alone, 
observe,  pure  and  precious  ancient  art  exists,  for  there  is  none  in 
America,  none  in  Asia,  none  in  Africa),  you  conduct  yourselves 
precisely  as  a  manufacturer  would,  who  attended  to  his  looms,  but 
left  his  warehouse  without  a  roof.  The  rain  floods  your  ware- 
house, the  rats  frolic  in  it,  the  spiders  spin  in  it,  the  choughs  build 
in  it,  the  wall-plague  frets  and  festers  in  it,  and  still  you  keep 
weave,  weave,  weaving  at  your  wretched  webs,  and  thinking  you 
are  growing  rich,  while  more  is  gnawed  out  of  vour  warehouse  in 
an  hour  than  you  can  weave  in  a  twelvemonth. 

Even  this  similitude  is  not  absurd  enough  to  set  us  rightly  forth. 
The  weaver  would,  or  might,  at  least,  hope  that  his  new  woof  waa 
as  stout  33  the  old  ones,  and  that,  therefore,  in  spite  of  rain  and 
ravage,  h.)  would  have  something  to  wrap  himself  in  when  he 
Qeeded  it.     But  our  webs  rot  as  we  spin.     The  very  fact  that  we 


LECT.    II.]  III.    ACCUMULATiON.  6fl 

despise  tin;  great  art  of  the  past  shows  that  we  can  Lot  produce 
great  art  now.  If  we  could  do  it,  we  should  love  it  when  we  saw 
it  done — if  we  really  cared  for  it,  we  should  recognise  it  and  keep 
it ;  but  we  don't  cai-e  for  it.  It  is  not  art  that  we  want ;  it  is 
amusement,  gratification  of  pride,  present  gain — anything  in  the 
world  but  art:  let  it  rot,  we  shall  always  have  enough  to  talk 
about  and  hang  over  our  sideboards. 

You  will  (I  hope)  finally  ask  me  what  is  the  outcome  of  all  this 
practicable  to-morrow  morning  by  us  who  are  sitting  here  ?  These 
are  the  main  practical  outcomes  of  it :  In  the  first  place,  don't 
grumble  when  you  hear  of  a  new  picture  being  bought  by  Govern- 
ment at  a  large  price.  There  are  many  pictures  in  Europe  now 
in  danger  of  destruction  which  are,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word, 
priceless ;  the  proper  price  is  simply  that  which  it  is  necessary  to 
give  to  get  and  to  save  them.  If  you  can  get  them  for  fifty 
pounds,  do ;  if  not  for  less  than  a  hundred,  do ;  if  not  for  less  than 
five  thousand,  do ;  if  not  for  less  than  twenty  thousand,  do  ;  never 
mind  being  imposed  upon :  there  is  nothing  disgraceful  in  being 
imposed  upon ;  the  only  disgrace  is  in  imposing ;  and  you  can't 
in  general  get  anything  much  worth  having,  in  the  way  of  Conti- 
nental art,  but  it  must  be  with  the  help  or  connivance  of  numbers 
of  people,  who,  indeed,  ought  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
matter,  but  who  practically  have,  and  always  will  have,  everything 
to  do  with  it ;  and  if  you  don't  choose  to  submit  to  be  cheated  by 
them  out  of  a  ducat  here  and  a  zecchin  there,  yon  will  be  cheated 
by  them  out  of  your  picture ;  and  whether  you  are  most  imposed 
upon  in  losing  that,  or  the  zecchins,  I  think  I  may  leave  you  to 
judge ;  though  I  know  there  are  many  political  economists,  who 
would  rather  leave  a  bag  of  gold  on  a  garret-table,  than  give  a 
porl,(;r  sixpence  extra  to  carry  it  downstairs. 

That,  then,  is  the  first  practical  outcome  of  the  matter.  Nevei 
f^rinnblc,  but  be  glad  when  you  hear  of  a  new  picture  being  bought 
nt  a  large  price.     In  the  long  run,  the  dearest  pictures  are  alwayj 


70  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lKCT.    II 

the  best  bargains ;  and,  I  repeat  (for  else  you  might  think  I  said 
It  ia  mere  hurry  of  talk,  and  not  deliberately),  there  are  some 
pictures  which  are  without  price.  Ydu  should  stand,  nationally, 
at  the  edge  of  Dover  cliffs — Shakespeare's— and  wave  blank 
cheques  in  the  eyes  of  the  nations  on  the  other  side  of  the  seai 
freely  offered,  for  such  and  such  canvasses  of  theirs. 

Then  the  next  practical  outcome  of  it  is — Never  buy  a  copy  of 
a  picture,  under  any  circumstances  whatever.  All  copies  are  bad ; 
because  no  painter  who  is  worth  a  straw  ever  will  copy.  He  will 
make  a  study  of  a  picture  he  likes,  for  his  own  use,  in  his  own 
way ;  but  he  won't  and  can't  copy ;  whenever  you  buy  a  copy, 
you  buy  so  much  misunderstanding  of  the  original,  and  encourage 
a  dull  person  in  following  a  business  he  is  not  fit  for,  besides 
increasing  ultimately  chances  of  mistake  and  imposture,  and  far- 
thering, as  directly  as  money  can  farther,  the  cause  of  ignorance 
in  all  directions.  You  may,  in  fact,  consider  yourself  as  having 
purchased  a  certain  quantity  of  mistakes ;  and,  according  to  your 
power,  being  engaged  in  disseminating  them. 

I  do  not  mean,  however,  that  copies  should  never  be  made 
A  certain  number  of  dull  persons  should  always  be  employed  by 
a  Government  in  making  the  most  accurate  copies  possible  of  all 
good  pictures  ;  these  copies,  though  artistically  valueless,  would  be 
bictorically  and  documentarily  valuable,  in  the  event  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  oi'iginal  picture.  The  studies  also  made  by  great  artists 
for  their  own  use,  should  be  sought  after  with  the  greatest  eager- 
ness ;  they  are  often  to  be  bought  cheap  ;  and  in  connection  with 
mechanical  copies,  would  become  very  precious;  tracings  from 
frescos  and  other  large  works  are  all  of  great  value  ;  for  though  a 
tracing  is  liable  to  just  as  many  mistakes  as  a  copy,  the  mistakes 
in  a  tracing  are  of  one  kind  only,  which  may  be  allowed  for,  but 
the  mistakes  of  a  common  copyist  are  of  all  conceivable  kinds : 
finally,  engravings,  in  so  far  as  they  convey  certain  facts  about  the 
pictures,  are  oft3n  serviceable  and  valuable.     I  can't,  of  course, 


l.ECT.    II.  I  IV.    DISTRIBUTION.  7l 

enter  into  details  in  these  matters  just  now ;  only  this  main  piece 
of  advice  I  can  safely  give  you — never  to  buy  copies  of  pictures 
(for  your  private  possession)  which  pretend  to  give  di,  facsimile  that 
shall  be  in  any  wise  representative  of^  or  equal  to,  the  original. 
Whenever  you  do  so,  you  are  only  lowering  your  taste,  and  wast- 
ing your  money.  And  if  you  are  generous  and  wise,  you  will  be 
ready  rather  to  subscribe  as  much  as  you  would  have  given  for  a 
copy  of  a  great  picture,  towards  its  purchase,  or  the  purchase  of 
some  other  like  it,  by  the  nation.  There  ought  to  be  a  great 
National  Society  instituted  for  the  purchase  of  pictures ;  presenting 
them  to  the  various  galleries  in  our  great  cities,  and  watching 
^here  over  their  safety :  but  in  the  meantime,  you  can  always  act 
Scifely  and  beneficially  by  merely  allowing  your  artist  friends  to 
buy  pictures  for  you,  when  they  see  good  ones.  Never  buy  for 
yourselves,  nor  go  to  the  foreign  dealers ;  but  let  any  painter  whom 
you  know  be  entrusted,  when  he  finds  a  neglected  old  picture  in 
an  old  house,  to  try  if  he  cannot  get  it  for  you ;  then,  if  you  like 
it,  keep  it ;  if  not,  send  it  to  the  hammer,  and  you  will  find  that 
you  do  not  lose  money  on  pictures  so  purchased. 

And  the  third  and  chief  practical  outcome  of  the  matter  is  this 
general  one  ;  Where\'er  you  go,  whatever  you  do,  act  more  for 
preservation  and  less  for  production,  I  assure  you,  the  world  is, 
generally  speaking,  in  calamitous  disorder,  and  just  because  you 
have  managed  to  thrust  some  of  the  lumber  aside,  and  get  an 
available  corner  for  yourselves,  you  think  you  should  do  nothing 
but  sit  spinning  in  it  all  day  long — while,  as  householders  and 
economists,  your  first  thought  and  effort  should  be,  to  set  things 
more  square  all  about  you.  Try  to  set  the  ground  floors  in  order, 
and  get  the  rottenness  out  of  your  granaries.  Then  s>\i  and  spin, 
but  not  till  then. 

IV.  DisTRinnTiox. — And  no>v,  lastly,  we  come  to  the  fourth 
(great  heivd  of  our  inquiry,  the  question  of  the  wise  distribution  of 


72  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    CF    ART.  [lECT.    II 

the  art  we  have  gathered  and  preserved.  It  must  be  evident  to  us, 
at  a  moment's  thought,  that  the  way  in  which  works  of-  art  are 
on  the  whole  most  useful  to  the  nation  to  which  they  belong, 
must  be  by  their  collection  in  pubHc  galleries,  supposing  those 
galleries  propeily  managed.  But  there  is  one  disadvantage 
attached  necessarily  to  gallery  exhibition,  namely,  the  extent  of 
mischief  which  may  be  done  by  one  foolish  curator.  As  long  a  a 
the  pictures  which  form  the  national  wealth  are  disposed  in  private 
collections,  the  chance  is  always  that  the  people  who  buy  them  will 
be  just  the  people  who  are  fond  of  them  ;  and  that  the  sense  of 
exchangeable  value  in  the  commodity  they  possess,  will  induce 
them,  even  if  they  do  not  esteem  it  themselves,  to  take  such  care 
of  it  as  will  presei;ve  its  value  undiminished.  At  all  events,  so 
!ong  as  works  of  art  are  scattered  throughout  the  nation,  no  uni- 
versal destruction  of  them  is  possible ;  a  certain  average  only  are 
lost  by  accidents  frem  time  to  time.  But  when  they  are  once 
collected  in  a  large  public  gallery,  if  the  appointment"  of  curator 
becomes  in  any  way  a  matter  of  formality,  or  the  post  is  so  lucra- 
tive as  to  be  disputed  by  place-hunters,  let  but  one  foolish  or  care- 
less person  get  possession  of  it,  and  perhaps  you  may  have  all  youi 
fine  pictures  repainted,  and  the  national  property  destroyed,  in  a 
month.  That  is  actually  the  case  at  this  moment  in  several  great 
foreign  galleries.  They  are  the  places  of  execution  of  pictures  : 
over  their  doors  you  only  want  the  Dantesque  inscription,  "  Las- 
ciate  ogni  speranza,  voi  che  entrate.' 

Supposing,  however,  this  danger  properly  guarded  against,  as  it 
would  be  always  by  a  nation  which  either  knew  the  value,  oi 
understood  the  meaning,  of  painting,*  arrangement  in  a  publn 
gallery  is  the  safest,  as  well  as  the  most  serviceable,  method  oi 

♦  It  would  be  a  great  point  gained  towards  the  preservalion  of  pictures  U 
I  were  maie  a  rule  that  at  every  operation  they  underwent,  the  exact  spot* 
n  wliich  they  have  been  re-painted  should  be  recorded  in  writing. 


LECT.  II.J  IV.    DISTRIUUTION.  73 

exhibiting  pictures  ;  and  it  is  the  only  mode  in  wLicli  their  hi.sl.ori 
cal  value  can  be  brought  out,  and  their  historical  meaning  made 
clear.  But  great  good  is  also  to  be  done  by  encouraging  the  pri- 
vate possession  of  pictures ;  partly  as  a  means  of  study,  (much 
more  being  always  discovered  in  any  work  of  art  by  a  person  who 
has  it  perpetually  near  him  than  by  one  who  only  sees  it  from 
time  to  time,)  and  also  as  a  means  of  refining  the  habits  and 
touching  the  hearts  of  the  masses  of  the  nation  in  their  domestic 
life. 

For  these  last  purposes  the  most  serviceable  art  is  the  living  art 
of  the  time ;  the  particular  tastes  of  the  people  will  be  best  met, 
and  their  particular  ignorances  best  corrected,  by  painters  laboui 
ing  in  the  midst  of  them,  more  or  less  guided  to  the  knowledge  of 
what  is  wanted  by  the  degree  of  sympathy  with  which  their  work 
is  received.  So  then,  generally,  it  should  be  the  object  of  go- 
vernment, and  of  all  patrons  of  art,  to  collect,  as  far  as  may  be, 
the  works  of  dead  masters  in  public  galleries,  arranging  them  so 
as  to  illustrate  the  history  of  nations,  and  the  progress  and  influ- 
ence of  their  arts ;  and  to  encourage  the  private  possession  of  the 
works  of  living  masters.  And  the  first  and  best  way  in  which  to 
encourage  such  private  possession  is,  of  course,  to  keep  down  the 
price  of  them  as  far  as  you  can. 

I  hope  there  are  not  a  great  many  painters  in  the  room;  if 
there  are,  I  entreat  their  patience  for  the  next  quarter  of  an  hour : 
if  they  will  bear  with  me  for  so  long,  I  hope  they  will  not,  finally, 
be  offended  by  what  I  am  n'oing  to  say. 

I  repeat,  trusting  to  their  indulgence  in  the  interim,  that  the 
first  object  of  our  national  economy,  as  respects  the  distribution 
of  modern  art,  should  be  steadily  and  rationally  to  limit  its  prices, 
since  by  doing  so,  you  will  produce  two  effects;  you  wil'  make 
the  painters  produce  more  pictures,  two  or  three  instead  of  one, 
if  they  wish  to  make  money ;  and  you  will,  by  bringing  good 
pictures  within  the  reach  of  people  of  moderate  income,  excite  the 


74  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  ['.EOT     IL 

general  interest  of  the  nation  in  them,  increase  a  thousandfold  the 
demand  for  the  commodity,  and  therefore  its  wholesome  and 
natural  production. 

I  know  how  many  objections  must  arise  in  your  minds  at  th.« 
moment  to  what  I  say  ;  but  you  must  be  aware  that  it  is  not 
possible  for  me  in  an  hour  to  explain  all  the  moral  and  commercial  , 
bearings  of  such  a  principle  as  this.  Only,  believe  me,  I  do  not 
speak  lightly  ;  I  think  I  have  considered  all  the  objections  which 
could  be  rationally  brought  forward,  though  I  have  time  at  present 
only  to  glance  at  the  main  one,  namely,  the  idea  that  the  high 
prices  paid  for  modern  pictures  are  either  honourable,  or  service- 
able, to  the  painter.  So  far  from  this  being  so,  I  believe  one  of 
the  principal  obstacles  to  the  progress  of  modern  art  to  be  the 
high  prices  given  for  good  modern  pictures.  For  observe  first  the 
action  of  this  high  remuneration  on  the  artist's  mind.  If  he 
"gets  on,"  as  it  is  called,  catches  the  eye  of  the  public,  and 
especially  of  the  public  of  the  upper  classes,  there  is 'hardly  anj 
limit  to  the  fortune  he  may  acquire  ;  so  that,  in  his  early  years, 
his  mind  is  naturally  led  to  dwell  on  this  worldly  and  wealthy 
eminence  as  the  main  thing  to  be  reached  by  his  art ;  if  he  finds 
that  he  is  not  gradually  rising  towards  it,  he  thinks  there  is  some- 
thing wrong  in  his  work ;  or,  if  he  is  too  proud  to  think  that, 
still  the  bribe  of  wealth  and  honour  warps  him  from  his  honest 
labour  into  efforts  to  attract  attention ;  and  he  gradually  loses 
both  his  power  of  mind  and  his  rectitude  of  purpose.  This, 
according  to  the  degree  of  avarice  or  ambition  which  exists  in 
any  painter's  mind,  is  the  necessary  influence  upon  him  of  the 
hope  of  great  wealth  and  reputation.  But  the  harm  is  still 
greater,  in  so  far  as  the  possibility  of  attaining  fortune  of  this  kind 
*.empts  people  continually  to  become  painters  who  have  no  real 
gift  for  the  work ;  and  on  whom  these  motives  of  mere  worldly 
interest  have  exclusive  influence ; — men  who  torment  and  abuse 
the  patient  workers,  eclipse  or  thrust  aside  all  delicate  and  good 


LKCT.  II.J  IV     DISTRIBUTION  75 

pictures  by  tlicir  own  gaudy  and  coarse  ones,  corrupt  the  taste  of 
the  public,  and  do  the  greatest  amount  of  mischief  to  the  schools 
of  art  in  their  day  which  it  is  possible  for  their  capacities  to  effect 
and  it  is  quite  wonderful  how  much  mischief  may  be  done  ever 
by  small  capacity.  If  you  could  by  any  means  succeed  in  keep 
ing  the  prices  of  pictures  down,  3-0U  would  throw  all  these  disi- 
turbers  out  ol  the  way  at  once. 

You  may  perhaps  think  that  this  severe  treatment  would  dc 
more  harm  than  good,  by  withdrawing  the  wholesome  element  of 
emulation,  and  giving  no  stimulus  to  exertion ;  but  I  am  sorry  to 
say  that  artists  will  always  be  sufficiently  jealous  of  one  another, 
whether  you  pay  them  large  or  low  prices ;  and  as  for  stimulus  to 
exertion,  believe  me,  no  good  work  in  this  world  was  ever  done 
for  money,  nor  while  the  slightest  thought  of  money  affected  the 
painter's  mind.  Whatever  idea  of  pecuniary  value  enters  into  his 
thoughts  as  he  works,  will,  in  proportion  to  the  distinctness  of  its 
presence,  shorten  his  power.  A  real  painter  will  work  for  you 
exquisitely,  if  you  give  him,  as  I  told  you  a  little  while  ago,  bread 
and  water  and  salt ;  and  a  bad  painter  will  work  badly  anu 
liastily,  though  you  give  him  a  palace  to  live  in,  and  a  princedom 
to  live  upon.  Turner  got,  in  his  earlier  years,  half-a-crown  a  day 
and  his  supper  (not  bad  pay,  neither);  and  he  learned  to  paint 
upon  that.  And  I  believe  that  there  is  no  chance  of  art's  truly 
nourishing  in  any  country,  until  you  make  it  a  simple  and  plain 
business,  providing  its  masters  with  an  easy  competence,  but  rarely 
with  anything  more.  And  T  say  this,  not  because  I  despise  the 
great  painter,  but  because  I  honour  him ;  and  I  should  no  more 
think  of  adding  to  his  respectability  or  happiness  by  giving  him 
riches,  than,  if  Shakspeare  or  Milton  were  alive,  I  shouM  think 
we  added  to  their  respectability,  or  were  likely  to  get  better  work 
from  them,  by  making  them  millionaires. 

But,  observe,  it  is  not  only  the  painter  himself  whom  you  injure, 
Dy  giving  him  too  high  prices;  you  injure  all  the  inferior  painter? 


76  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lKCT.    II 

of  the  day.  If  they  are  modest,  tliey  will  be  discouraged  md 
depressed  by  the  feeling  that  their  doings  are  worth  so  Httle,  com- 
paiatively,  in  your  eyes; — if  proud,  all  their  worst  passions  will  be 
aroused,  and  the  insult  or  opprobrium  which  they  will  try  to  cast 
on  their  successful  rival  will  not  only  afflict  and  wound  him,  but 
Ht  last  sour  and  harden  him :  he  cannot  pass  through  such  a  trial 
without  grievous  harm. 

That,  then,  is  the  effect  you  produce  on  the  painter  of  niark, 
and  on  the  inferior  ones  of  his  own  standing.  But  you  do  worse 
than  this;  you  deprive  yourselves,  by  what  you  give  for  the 
fashionable  picture,  of  the  power  of  helping  the  younger  men  who 
are  coming  forward.  Be  it  admitted,  for  argument's  sake,  if  you 
are  not  convinced  by  what  I  have  said,  that  you  do  no  harm  to 
the  great  man  by  paying  him  well ;  yet  certainly  you  do  him  no 
special  good.  His  reputation  is  established,  and  his  fortune  made  ; 
he  does  not  care  whether  you  buy  or  not :  he  thinks  he  is  rather 
doing  you  a  favour  than  otherwise  by  letting  you  have  one  of  his 
pictures  at  all.  All  the  good  you  do  him  is  to  help  him  to  buy  a 
new  pair  of  carriage  horses ;  whereas,  with  that  same  sum  which 
thus  you  cast  away,  you  might  have  relieved  the  hearts  and  pre- 
served the  health  of  twenty  young  painters ;  and  if  among  those 
twenty,  you  but  chanced  on  one  in  whom  a  true  latent  power  had 
been  hindered  by  his  poverty,  just  consider  what  a  far-bran cliing, 
far- embracing  good  you  have  wrought  with  that  lucky  expenditure 
of  yours.  I  say,  "  Consider  it"  in  vain ;  you  cannot  consider  it, 
for  you  cannot  conceive  the  sickness  of  the  heart  with  which  a 
young  painter  of  deep  feeling  toils  through  his  first  obscurity  ;— 
his  sense  of  the  strong  voice  within  him,  which  }0u  will  not 
liear ; — his  vain,  fond,  wondering  witness  to  the  things  you  will 
not  see; — his  far  away  perception  of  things  that  he  could  accom 
plish  if  he  had  but  peace  and  time,  all  unapproachable  and  vanish- 
ing from  him,  because  no  one  will  leave  him  peace  or  grant  him 
time  :  all  his  friends  falling  back  from  him  ;  those  whom  he  would 


LECT.    II.J  IV.    DISTRIBUTION.  7*3 

most  reverently  oLey  rebuking  and  paralysing  bim ;  and  hist  and 
worst  of  all,  tlxose  wbo  believe  in  him  the  most  faiinfuUy  suffering 
by  him  the  most  bitterly  ; — the  wife's  eyes,  in  their  sweet  ambition, 
shining  brighter  as  the  cheek  wastes  away ;  and  the  little  lips  at 
his  side  parched  and  pale  which  one  day,  he  knows,  though  ho 
may  never  so.e  it,  will  quiver  so  proudly  when  they  name  his  name, 
calling  him  "  our  father."  You  deprive  yourselves,  by  your  largo 
expenditure  for  pictures  of  mark,  of  the  power  of  relieving  and 
redeeming  this  distress ;  you  injure  the  painter  whom  you  pay  so 
largely; — and  what,  after  all,  have  you  done  for  yourselves,  or 
got  foi  yourselves  ?  It  does  not  in  the  least  follow  that  the  hur 
ried  work  of  a  fashionable  painter  will  contain  more  for  youi 
money  than  the  quiet  work  of  some  unknown  man.  In  all  pro- 
bability, you  will  find,  if  you  rashly  purchase  what  is  popular  at  a 
high  price,  that  you  have  got  one  picture  you  don't  care  for,  for 
a  sum  which  would  have  bought  twenty  you  would  have  delighted 
in.  P'ur  remember  always  that  the  price  of  a  picture  by  a  living 
artist,  never  represents,  never  can  represent,  the  quantity  of  labour 
or  value  in  it.  Its  price  represents,  for  the  most  part,  the  degree 
of  desire  which  the  rich  people  of  the  country  have  to  possess  it- 
Once  get  the  wealthy  classes  to  imagine  that  the  possession  of 
pictures  by  a  given  artist  adds  to  their  "gentility,"  and  there  is 
no  price  which  his  work  may  not  immediately  reach,  and  for  years 
maintain ;  and  in  buying  at  that  price,  you  are  not  getting  value 
for  your  money,  but  merely  disputing  for  victory  in  a  contest  of 
ostentation.  And  it  is  hardly  .possible  to  spend  your  money  in  a 
worse  or  more  wasteful  way ;  for  though  you  may  not  be  doing  it 
for  ostentation  yourself,  you  are,  by  your  pertinacity,  nourishing 
the  ostentation  of  others ;  you  meet  them  in  tlunr  game  o<  wealth, 
and  continue  it  for  them;  if  they  had  not  found  an  oy.posite 
player,  the  game  would  have  been  done;  for  a  proud  man  can 
find  no  enjoyment  in  possessing  himself  of  what  nobody  disputes 
with  him.     So  that  by  every  farthing  you  give  for  a  picture  beyonc! 


78  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.    II, 

its  fair  price — tliat  is  to  say,  the  price  whicli  will  pay  the  painter  foi 
his  time — you  are  not  only  cheating  yourself  and  buying  vanity,  but 
you  are  stimulating  the  vanity  of  others ;  paying,  literally,  for  the 
jultivation  of  pride.  You  may  consider  every  pound  that  you 
spend  above  the  just  price  of  a  work  of  art,  as  an  investment  in  a 
rargo  of  mental  quick-lime  or  guano,  which,  being  laid  on  the 
fields  of  human  nature,  is  to  grow  a  harvest  of  pride.  You  are  in 
fact  ploughing  and  harrowing,  in  a  most  valuable  part  of  your 
land,  in  order  to  reap  the  whirlwind ;  you  are  setting  your  hand 
stoutly  to  Job's  agriculture,  "  Let  thistles  grow  instead  of  wheat, 
and  cockle  instead  of  barley.'' 

Well,  but  you  will  say,  there  is  one  advantage  in  high  prices, 
which  more  than  counterbalances  all  this  mischief  namely,  that 
by  great  reward  we  both  urge  and  enable  a  painter  to  produce 
rather  one  perfect  picture  than  many  inferior  ones  :  and  one  per- 
fect picture  (so  you  tell  us,  and  we  believe  it)  is  worth  a  great 
number  of  inferior  ones. 

It  is  so ;  but  you  cannot  get  it  by  paying  for  it.  A  great  work 
is  only  done  when  the  painter  gets  into  the  humour  for  it,  likes  his 
subject,  and  determines  to  paint  it  as  well  as  he  can,  whether  he 
is  paid  for  it  or  not ;  but  bad  work,  and  generally  the  worst  sort 
of  bad  work,  is  done  when  he  is  trying  to  produce  a  showy  pic- 
ture, or  one  that  shall  appear  to  have  as  much  labour  in  it  as  shall 
bo  worth  a  high  price,* 

•  When  this  lecture  was  delivered,  I  gave  here  some  data  for  approximate 
estimates  of  the  average  value  of  good  modern  pictures  of  different  classes ; 
but  the  subject  is  too  complicated  to  be  adequately  t.'eated  in  writing,  witlt 
out  introducing  more  detail  than  the  reader  wUl  have  patience  for.  But  1 
may  state  roughly,  that  prices  above  a  hundred  guineas  are  in  general  extra 
vagant  for  water-colours,  and  above  five  hundred  for  oils.  An  artist 
almost  always  does  wrong  who  puts  more  work  than  these  prices  will  remu- 
nerate him  for  into  any  single  canvass — his  talent  would  be  better  employed 
in  painting  two  pictures  than  one  so  elaborate.     The  water-colour  painteri 


LKCr.    n.]  IV.    DISTRS.BUTION.  79 

There  is,  however,  another  point,  and  a  still  more  impoitant 
one,  bearing  on  this  matter  of  purchase,  than  the  keeping  down 
of  prices  to  a  rational  standard.  And  that  is,  that  you  pay  your 
prices  into  the  hands  of  living  men,  and  do  not  pour  them  into 
coffins, 

For  observe  that,  as  we  arrange  our  payment  of  pictures  at 
present,  no  artist's  work  is  worth  half  its  proper  value  while  he  is 
alive.  The  moment  he  dies,  his  pictures,  if  they  are  good,  reach 
double  their  former  value  ;  but  that  rise  of  price  represents  simply 
a  profit  made  by  the  intelligent  dealer  or  purchaser  on  his  past 
purchases.  So  that  the  real  facts  of  the  matter  are,  that  the  Bri- 
tish public,  spending  a  certain  sura  annually  in  art,  determines 
that,  of  every  thousand  it  pays,  only  five  hundred  shall  go  to  the 
painter,  or  shall  be  at  all  concerned  in  the  production  of  art ;  and 
that  the  other  five  hundred  shall  be  paid  merely  as  a  testimonial 
to  the  intelligent  dealer,  who  knew  what  to  buy.  Now,  testimo- 
nials are  very  pretty  and  proper  things,  within  due  limits ;  but 
testimonial  to  the  amount  of  a  hundred  per  cent,  on  the  total 
expenditure  is  not  good  political  economy.  Do  not,  therefore,  in 
general,  unless  you  see  it  to  be  necessary  for  its  preservation,  buy 
the  picture  of  a  dead  artist.  If  you  fear  that  it  may  be  exposed  to 
contempt  or  neglect,  buy  it ;  its  price  will  then,  probably,  not  be 
high  :  if  you  want  to  put  it  into  a  public  gallery,  buy  it ;  you  are 
sure,  then,  that  you  do  not  spend  your  money  selfishly  :  or,  if  you 
loved  the  man's  work  while  he  was  alive,  and  bought  it  then,  buy 
it  also  now,  if  you  can  see  no  living  work  equal  to  it.  But  if  you 
did  not  buy  it  while  the  man  was  living,  never  buy  it  after  he  is 

also  are  getting  intc  the  habit  of  making  their  drawings  too  largo,  and  in  a 
measure  attaching  their  price  rather  to  breadth  and  extent  of  touch  than  to 
th.ouphtful  labour.  Of  course  marked  exceptions  occur  here  and  there,  aa 
in  tb':)  case  of  John  Lewis,  whose  drawings  are  wrought  with  unfailing  pre 
cision  throughout,  whatever  their  scale  Hardlj  any  price  can  be  reromw 
rstive  for  guch  work. 


80  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.   n 

dead  :  you  are  then  doing  no  good  to  him,  and  you  are  doing  some 
shame  to  yourself.  Look  around  you  for  pictures  that  you  really 
like,  and  by  buying  which  you  can  help  some  genius  yet  unpe- 
rished — that  is  the  best  atonement  you  can  make  to  the  one  you 
have  neglected — and  give  to  the  living  and  struggling  painter  ,^t 
once  wages,  and  testimonial. 

So  far  then  of  the  motives  which  should  induce  us  to  keep 
down  the  prices  of  modern  art,  and  thus  render  it,  as  a  private 
possession,  attainable  by  greater  numbers  of  people  than  at  present. 
But  we  should  strive  to  render  it  accessible  to  them  in  other  ways 
also — chiefly  by  the  permanent  decoration  of  public  buildings; 
and  it  is  in  this  field  that  I  think  we  may  look  for  the  profitable 
means  of  providing  that  constant  employment  for  young  painters 
of  which  we  were  speaking  last  evening. 

The  first  and  most  important  kind  of  public  buildings  which  we 
are  always  sure  to  want,  are  schools :  and  I  would  ask  you  to  con- 
sider very  carefully,  whether  we  may  not  wisely  introduce  some 
great  changes  in  the  way  of  school  decoration.  Hitherto,  as  far  as 
I  know,  it  has  either  been  so  difficult  to  give  all  the  education  we 
wanted  to  our  lads,  that  we  have  been  obliged  to  do  it,  if  at  all, 
with  cheap  furniture  in  bare  walls ;  or  else  we  have  considered 
that  cheap  furniture  and  bare  walls  are  a  proper  part  of  the  means 
of  education  ;  and  supposed  that  boys  learned  best  when  they  sat 
on  hard  forms,  and  had  nothing  but  blank  plaster  about  and  above 
them  whereupon  to  employ  their  spare  attention  ;  also,  that  it  was 
as  well  they  should  be  accustomed  to  rough  and  ugly  conditions 
of  things,  partly  by  way  of  preparing  them  for  the  hardships  of 
life,  and  partly  that  there  might  be  the  least  possible  damage  done 
to  floors  and  forms,  in  the  event  of  their  becoming,  during  the 
master's  absence,  the  fields  or  instruments  of  battle.  All  this  is 
BO  far  well  and  necessary,  as  it  relates  to  the  training  of  country 
lads,  and  the  first  training  of  boys  in  general.  But  there  certainly 
comes  a  period  in  the  life  of  a  well  educated  youth,  in  which  one 


LECT.    II.]  IV.    DISTRIBUTION.  8*1 

of  the  principal  elements  of  bis  education  is,  or  ought  to  be,  to  give 
him  refinement  of  habits ;  and  not  only  to  teach  him  the  strong 
exercises  of  which  his  frame  is  capable,  but  also  to  increase  hia 
bodily  sensibility  and  refinement,  and  show  him  such  small  mat- 
ters as  the  way  of  handling  things  properly,  and  treating  them 
considerately.  Not  only  so,  but  I  believe  the  notion  of  fixing  the 
attention  by  keeping  the  room  empty,  is  a  wholly  mistaken  one  : 
I  think  it  is  just  in  the  emptiest  room  that  the  mind  wanders  most 
for  it  gets  restless,  like  a  bird,  for  want  of  a  perch,  and  casts  about 
for  any  possible  means  of  getting  out  and  away.  And  even  if  it 
be  fixed,  by  an  efibrt,  on  the  business  in  hand,  that  business 
becomes  itself  repulsive,  more  than  it  need  be,  by  the  vileness  ol 
its  associations ;  and  many  a  study  appears  dull  or  painful  to  a 
boy,  when  it  is  pursued  on  a  blotted  deal  desk,  under  a  wall  with 
nothing  on  it  but  scratches  and  pegs,  which  would  have  been  pur- 
sued pleasantly  enough  in  a  curtained  comer  of  his  father's  library, 
or  at  the  lattice  window  of  his  cottage.  Nay,  my  own  belief  is, 
that  the  best  study  of  all  is  the  most  beautiful;  and  that  a  quiet 
glade  of  forest,  or  the  nook  of  a  lake  shore,  are  worth  all  the 
schoolrooms  in  Christendom,  when  once  you  are  past  the  multipli- 
cation table ;  but  be  that  as  it  may,  there  is  no  question  at  all  but 
that  a  time  ought  to  come  in  the  life  of  a  well  trained  youth, 
when  he  can  sit  at  a  writing  table  without  wanting  to  throw  the 
inkstand  at  his  neighbour ;  and  when  also  he  will  feel  more  capa- 
ble of  certain  eff'orts  of  mind  with  beautiful  and  refined  forma 
about  him  than  with  ugly  ones.  When  that  time  comes  he 
ought  to  be  advanced  into  the  decorated  schools;  and  this  advance 
ought  to  be  one  of  the  important  and  honourable  epochs  of  his 
life. 

I  have  not  time,  however,  to  insist  on  the  mere  serviceableness 
to  our  youth  of  refined  architectural  decoration,  as  such ;  for  I 
want  you  'o  consider  the  probable  influence  of  the  particular  kind 
of  decoration  which  I  wish  you  to  get  for  them,  namely,  historical 

4* 


82  POLITICAL    ECONOMY     01     ART.  [lECT.    II 

paintirg.  You  know  we  have  hitherto  leen  in  the  habit  of  con- 
veying all  our  historical  knowledge,  such  as  it  is,  by  the  ear  only. 
never  by  the  eye  ;  all  our  notions  of  things  being  ostensibly 
derived  from  verbal  description,  not  from  sight.  Now,  I  have  no 
doubt  tha'.  as  we  grow  gradually  wiser — and  we  are  doing  so 
every  day — we  shall  discover  at  last  that  the  eye  is  a  nobler  organ 
tlian  the  ear ;  and  that  through  the  eye  we  must,  in  reality, 
obtain,  or  put  into  form,  nearly  all  the  useful  information  we  are 
to  have  about  this  world.  Even  as  the  matter  stands,  you  will 
find  that  the  knowledge  which  a  boy  is  supposed  to  receive  from 
verbal  description  is  only  available  to  him  so  far  as  in  any  under- 
hand way  he  gets  a  sight  of  the  thing  you  are  talking  about.  I 
remember  well  that,  for  many  years  of  my  life,  the  only  notion  I 
had  of  the  look  of  a  Greek  knight  was  complicated  between  recol- 
lection of  a  small  engraving  in  my  pocket  Pope's  Homer,  and 
reverent  study  of  the  Horse-Guards.  And  though  I  believe  thai 
most  boys  collect  their  ideas  from  more  varied  sources,  and 
arrange  them  more  carefully  than  I  did ;  still,  whatever  sources 
they  seek  must  always  be  ocular :  if  they  are  clever  boys,  they 
will  go  and  look  at  the  Greek  vases  and  sculptures  in  the  British 
Museum,  and  at  the  weapons  in  our  armouries — they  will  see 
what  real  armour  is  like  in  lustre,  and  what  Greek  armour  was 
like  in  form,  and  so  put  a  fairly  true  image  together,  but  still  not, 
in  ordinary  cases,  a  very  living  or  interesting  one.  Now,  the  use 
of  your  decorative  painting  would  be,  in  myriads  of  ways,  to 
animate  their  history  for  them,  and  to  put  the  living  aspect  of 
past  things  before  their  eyes  as  faithfully  as  intelligent  invention 
can;  so  that  the  master  shall  have  nothing  to  do  but  once  to 
point  to  the  schoolroom  walls,  and  for  ever  afterwards  the  u  eaning 
of  any  word  would  be  fixed  in  a  boy's  mind  in  the  best  possible 
way.  Is  it  a  question  of  classical  dress — what  a  tunic  was  like, 
or  a  chlamys,  or  a  peplus?  At  this  day,  you  have  to  point  to 
i-ome  vile  woodcut,  in  the  middle  of  a  dictionary  page,  represent- 


LKCT,    II.J  IV.    DISTRIBUTION.  83 

iug  the  thing  hang  upon  a  stick;  but  then,  you  would  point  to  p 
handled  fio-ures,  wearing  the  actual  dress,  in  its  fiery  colours,  in 
all  the  actions  of  various  stateliness  or  strength ;  you  would  under- 
stand at  once  how  it  fell  round  the  people's  limbs  as  they  stood, 
how  it  drifted  from  their  shoulders  as  they  went,  how  it  veiled 
their  faces  as  they  wept,  how  it  covered  their  heads  in  the  day  ol 
battle.  Now^  if  you  want  to  see  what  a  weapon  is  like,  you  refer, 
in  like  manner,  to  a  numbered  page,  in  which  there  are  spear- 
licads  in  rows,  and  sword-hilts  in  symmetrical  groups;  and 
gradually  the  boy  gets  a  dim  mathematical  notion  how  one 
scymitar  is  hooked  to  the  right  and  another  to  the  left,  and  one 
javelin  has  a  knob  to  it  and  another  none :  while  one  glance  at 
your  good  picture  would  show  him, — and  the  first  rainy  afternoon 
in  the  schoolroom  would  for  ever  fix  in  his  mind, — the  look  of  the 
sword  and  spear  as  they  fell  or  flew ;  and  how  they  pierced,  or 
bent,  or  shattered — how  men  wielded  them,  and  how  men  died 
by  them.  But  far  more  than  all  this,  is  it  a  question  not  of 
clothes  or  weapons,  but  of  men  ?  how  can  we  sufficiently  estimate 
the  effect  on  the  mind  of  a  noble  youth,  at  the  time  when  the 
world  opens  to  him,  of  having  faithful  and  touching  representa- 
tions put  before  him  of  the  acts  and  presences  of  great  men — 
how  many  a  resolution,  which  would  alter  and  exalt  the  whole 
cour&e  of  his  after-life,  might  be  formed,  when  in  some  dreamy 
twilight  he  met,  through  his  own  tears,  the  fixed  eyes  of  those 
shadows  of  the  great  dead,  unescapable  and  calm,  piercing  to  his 
soul ;  or  fancied  that  their  lips  moved  in  dread  reproof  or  sound- 
less exhortation.  And  if  but  for  one  out  of  many  this  were  true — 
if  yet,  in  a  few,  you  could  be  sure  that  such  influence  \ad  indeed 
changed  their  thoughts  and  destinies,  and  turned  the  eager  and 
reckless  youth,  who  would  have  Cftst  away  his  energies  on  the 
race-horse  oi  the  gambling-table,  to  that  noble  life-race,  that  holy 
life-hazard,  which  should  win  all  glory  to  himself  and  all  good  Ut 


84  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.   n 

his  country — would  not  that,  to  some  purpose,  be  "political 
economy  of  art?" 

And  observe,  there  could  oe  no  monotony,  no  exhaustiblenesa 
,  in  the  scenes  required  to  be  thus  portrayed.  Even  if  there  were, 
and  you  wanted  for  every  school  in  the  kingdom,  one  death  of 
Leonidas ;  one  battle  of  Marathon ;  one  death  of  Cleobis  and 
Bito ;  there  need  not  therefore  be  more  monotony  in  your  art 
than  there  was  in  the  repetition  of  a  given  cycle  of  subjects  by 
the  religious  painters  of  Italy.  But  we  ought  not  to  admit  a  cycle 
at  all.  For  though  we  had  as  many  great  schools  as  we  have 
great  cities  (one  day  I  hope  we  shall  have),  centuries  of  painting 
would  not  exhaust,  in  all  the  number  of  them,  the  noble  and 
pathetic  subjects  which  might  be  chosen  from  the  history  of  even 
one  noble  nation.  But,  beside  this,  you  will  not,  in  a  little  while, 
limit  your  youths'  studies  to  so  narrow  fields  as  you  do  now. 
There  will  come  a  time — I  am  sure  of  it — when  it  will  be  found 
that  the  same  practical  results,  both  in  mental  discipline,  and  in 
political  philosophy,  are  to  be  attained  by  the  accurate  study  of 
mediaeval  and  modem  as  .of  ancient  history  ;  and  that  the  facts 
of  mediaeval  and  modern  history  are,  on  the  whole,  the  most  im- 
portant to  us.  And  among  these  noble  groups  of  constellated 
schools  which  I  foresee  arising  in  our  England,  I  foresee  also  that 

"ere  will  be  divided  fields  of  thought;  and  that  while  each  wili 
e  its  scholars  a  great  general  idea  of  the  world's  history,  such 

»;  all  men  should  possess — each  will  also  take  u^on  itself,  as  its 
own  special  duty,  the  closer  study  of  the  course  of  events  in  some 
given  place  or  time.  It  will  review  the  rest  of  history,  but  it  wiU 
exhaust  its  own  special  field  of  it;  and  found  ts  moral  and 
political  teaching   on  the  most  perfect  possible  analysis   ~i  tht 

results  of  human  conduct  in  one  place,  and  at  one  epoch.  And 
then,  the  galleries  of  that  school  will  be  painted  with  the  historical 
scenes  belonging  to  the  age  which  it  has  chosen  for  its  specia 
study. 


LECT.    11.]  j.    .    DISTRIBUTION.  65 

So  far,  then,  of  art  as  }'0U  may  apply  it  to  that  great  seuos  of 
public  buildings  which  you  devote  to  the  education  of  youth.  The 
next  large  class  of  public  buildings  in  which  we  should  introduce 
it,  is  one  which  I  think  a  few  years  more  of  national  progress  will 
render  more  serviceable  to  us  than  they  have  been  lately,  t 
mean,  buildings  for  the  meetings  of  guilds  of  trades. 

And  here,  for  the  last  time,  I  must  again  interrupt  the  course 
of  our  chief  inquiry,  in  order  to  state  one  other  principle  of 
political  economy,  which  is  perfectly  simple  and  indisputable ;  but 
which,  nevertheless,  we  continually  get  into  commercial  embarrass- 
ments for  want  of  understanding ;  and  not  only  so,  but  suffer 
much  hindrance  in  our  commercial  discoveries,  because  many  of 
our  business  men  do  not  practically  admit  it. 

Supposing  half  a  dozen  or  a  dozen  men  were  cast  ashore  fi'om 
a  wreck  on  an  uninhabited  island,  and  left  to  their  own  resources, 
one  of  course,  according  to  his  capacity,  would  be  set  to  one 
business  and  one  to  another;  the  strongest  to  dig  and  to  cut  wood, 
and  to  build  huts  for  the  rest :  the  most  dexterous  to  make  shoes 
out  of  bark  and  coats  out  of  skins;  the  best  educated  to  look  foi 
iron  or  lead  in  the  rocks,  and  to  plan  the  channels  for  the  irriga 
tion  of  the  fields.  But  though  their  labours  were  thus  naturally 
severed,  that  small  group  of  shipwrecked  men  would  understand 
well  enough  that  the  speediest  progress  was  to  be  made  b)'  help- 
ing each  other, — not  by  opposing  each  other:  and  they  would 
know  that  this  help  could  only  be  properly  given  so  long  as  they 
were  frank  and  open  in  their  relations,  and  the  difficulties  which 
oach  lay  under  properly  explained  to  the^  rest.  So  that  any 
appearance  of  secresy  or  separateness  in  the  actions  of  «oy  of 
them  would  instantly,  and  justly,  be  looked  upon  with  suspicion 
hy  the  rest,  as  the  sign  of  some  selfish  or  foolish  proceeding  on  the 
part  of  the  individual.  If,  for  instance,  the  scientific  man  were 
found  to  have  gone  out  at  night,  unknown  to  the  rest,  to  alter  the 
sluicea,  the  others  would  think,  and  in  all  probability  rightly  think. 


86  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    Al.T.      .  [lECT.    IL 

that  be  wanted  to  get  the  best  supply  of  water  to  hib  own  Qeld ; 
and  if  the  shoemaker  refused  to  show  them  where  the  bark  gre^ 
which  he  made  the  sandals  of,  they  would  naturally  think,  and  in 
all  probability  rightly  think,  that  he  didn't  want  them  to  see  how 
much  there  was  of  it,  and  that  he  meant  to  ask  from  them  more 
corn  and  potatoes  in  exchange  for  his  sandals  than  the  trouble  ol 
making  them  deserved.  And  thus,  although  each  man  would 
have  a  portion  of  time  to  himself  in  which  he  was  allowed  to  do 
what  he  chose  without  let  or  inquiry, — so  long  as  he  was  workmg 
in  that  particular  business  which  he  had  undertaken  for  the  com- 
mon benefit,  any  secresy  on  his  part  would  be  immediately  sup- 
posed to  mean  mischief;  and  would  require  to  be  accounted  for, 
or  put  an  end  to :  and  this  all  the  more  because,  whatever  the 
work  might  be,  certainly  there  would  be  difiiculties  about  it  which, 
when  once  they  were  well  explained,  might  be  more  or  less  done 
away  with  by  the  help  of  the  rest ;  so  that  assuredly  every  one  ol 
them  would  advance  with  his  labour  not  only  more  happily,  but 
more  profitably  and  quickly,  by  having  no  secrets,  and  by  frankly 
bestowing,  and  frankly  receiving,  such  help  as  lay  in  his  way  to 
get  or  to  give. 

And,  just  as  the  best  and  richest  result  of  wealth  and  happiness 
to  the  whole  of  them,  would  follow  on  their  perseverance  in  such 
a  system  of  frank  communication  and  of  helpful  labour ; — so  pre- 
cisely the  worst  and  poorest  result  would  be  obtained  by  a  system 
of  secresy  and  of  enmity;  and  each  man's  happiness  and  wealth 
would  assuredly  be  diminished  in  proportion  to  the  degree  in 
which  jealousy  and  concealment  became  their  social  and  economi 
cal  principles.  It  would  not,  in  the  long  run,  bring  good,  but  only 
evilj  to  the  man  of  science,  if,  instead  of  telling  openly  where  he 
had  found  good  iron,  he  carefully  concealed  every  new  bed  of  it, 
that  he  might  ask,  in  exchange  for  the  rare  ploughshare,  more 
com  tom  the  farmer,  or  in  exchange  for  the  rude  needle,  more 
labour  from  the  sempstress  :  and  it  would  not  ultimately  bring 


lECT.    II.  I  IV.    DISTRIBUTION.  87 

good,  but  only  evil,  to  the  farmers,  if  tliey  souglit  to  burn  eact 
other's  cornstacks,  that  they  might  raise  the  value  of  their  grain, 
or  if  the  sempstresses  tried  to  break  each  other's  needles,  that  each 
might  get  all  the  stitching  to  herself. 

Now,  these  laws  of  human  action  are  precisely  as  authoritative 
in  their  application  to  the  conduct  of  a  million  of  men,  as  to  that 
of  six  or  twelve.  All  enmity,  jealousy,  opposition,  and  secresy  are 
wholly,  and  in  all  circumstances,  destructive  in  their  nature — not 
productive;  and  all  kindness,  fellowship,  and  communicativeness 
are  invariably  productive  in  their  operation, — not  destructive ;  and 
the  evil  principles  of  opposition  and  exclusiveness  are  not  ren- 
dered less  fatal,  but  more  fatal,  by  their  acceptance  among  large 
masses  of  men ;  more  fatal,  I  say,  exactly  in  proportion  as  their 
influence  is  more  secret.  For  though  the  opposition  does  always 
its  own  simple,  necessary,  direct  quantity  of  harm,  and  withdraws 
always  its  own  simple,  necessary,  measurable  quantity  of  wealth 
from  the  sum  possessed  by  the  community,  yet,  in  proportion  to 
the  size  of  the  community,  it  does  another  and  more  refined  mis- 
chief than  this,  by  concealing  its  own  fatality  under  aspects  of  mer- 
cantile complication  and  expediency,  and  giving  rise  to  multitudes 
C'f  false  theories  based  oc  a  mean  belief  in  narrow  and  immediate 
appearances  of  good  done  here  and  there  by  things  which  have 
the  universal  and  everlasting  nature  of  evil.  So  that  the  time  and 
powers  of  the  nation  are  wasted,  not  only  in  wretched  struggling 
against  each  other,  but  in  vain  complaints,  and  groundless  disi.-ou- 
ragements,  and  empty  investigations,  and  useless  experiments  in 
laws,  and  elections,  and  inventions;  with  hope  always  to  pull  wis- 
dom through  some  new-shaped  slit  'n  a  ballot-box,  r  ;ul  to  drag 
prosperity  down  out  of  the  clouds  along  some  new  knot  of  electric 
wire;  while  all  the  while  Wisdom  stands  calling  at  the  corners  of 
(be  streets,  and  the  blessing  of  heaven  waits  ready  to  I'ain  dowi, 
upon  us,  deeper  than  the  rivers  and  broader  than  the  dew,  if  only 
we  will  obey  the  first  plain  principles  of  humanity,  and  the  first 


88  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    AR'I.  [lECT.    II 

plain  precepts  of  the  skies;  "Execute  true  judgment,  and  show 
mercy  and  compassion,  every  man  to  his  brother ;  and  let  none  of 
you  unagine  evil  against  his  brother  in  your  heart."* 

Therefore,  I  believe  most  firmly,  that  as  the  laws  of  nationa 
prosperity  get  familiar  to  us,  we  shall  more  and  more  cast  our  toil 
hito  social  and  communicative  systems ;  and  that  one  of  the  first 
means  of  our  doing  so,  will  be  the  re-establishing  guilds  of  every 
important  trade  in  a  vital,  not  formal,  condition ; — that  there  will 
be  a  great  council  or  government  house  for  the  members  of  every 
trade,  built  in  whatever  town  of  the  kingdom  occupies  itself  prin- 
cipally in  such  trade,  with  minor  council  halls  in  other  cities ;  and 
to  each  council-hall,  ofiicers  attached,  whose  first  business  may  be 

*  It  would  be  well  ifj  instead  of  preaching  continually  about  the  doctrint, 
of  faith  and  good  works,  our  clergymen  would  simply  explain  to  their  people 
a  Uttle  what  good  works  mean.  There  is  not  a  chapter  in  all  the  book  we 
profess  to  believe,  more  specially,  and  directly  written  for  England,  than  the 
second  of  Habakkuk,  and  I  never  in  all  my  life  heard  one  of  its  practical  texts 
preached  from.  I  suppose  the  clergymen  are  aU  afraid,  and  know  that  their 
flocks,  while  they  will  sit  quite  poUtely  to  hear  syllogisms  out  of  the  epistle 
to  the  Romans,  would  get  restive  directly  if  they  ever  pressed  a  practical 
text  home  to  them.  But  we  should  have  no  mercantile  catastrophes,  and  no 
distressful  pauperism,  if  we  only  read  often,  and  took  to  heart,  those  plain 
words:  "Tea,  also,  because  he  is  a  proud  man,  neither  keepeth  at  home, 
who  enlargeth  his  desire  as  hell,  and  cannot  be  satisfied, — Shall  not  all  these 
take  up  a  parable  against  him,  and  a  taunting  proverb  against  him,  and  say, 
'  Woe  to  him  that  increaseth  that  which  is  not  his :  and  to  him  that  ladeth 
himself  with  thick  clay.'' "  (What  a  glorious  history,  in  one  metaphor,  of  the 
Ufe  of  a  man  greedy  of  fortune.)  "  Woe  to  him  that  coveteth  an  evil  cove- 
tousness  that  he  may  set  his  nest  on  high.  Woe  to  him  that  buildoth  a 
iown  with  blood,  and  stabhsheth  a  city  by  iniquity.  Behold,  is  it  not  of  tlie 
Lord  of  Hosts  that  the  people  shall  laboiu"  in  the  very  fire,  and  the  people 
ahall  weary  themselves  for  very  vanity." 

The  Americans,  who  have  been  sending  out  ships  wath  sham  bolt-heads  ot 
their  timbers,  and  only  half  their  bolts,  may  meditaLe  on  that  "buildelii  a 
lown  with  blood." 


LECT.    II.]  IV.    DISTRIBUTION  89 

to  examine  into  tiic  circumstances  cf  every  operative,  in  tLat  trade, 
who  chooses  to  report  himself  to  them  when  out  of  work,  and  to 
set  him  to  work,  if  he  is  indeed  able  and  willing,  at  a  fixed  rate  ol 
wages,  determined  at  regular  periods  in  the  council-meetings; 
and  whose  next  duty  may  be  to  bring  reports  before  the  council 
of  all  improvements  made  in  the  business,  and  means  of  its  extcn 
sion  :  not  allowing  private  patents  of  any  kind,  but  making  all 
improvements  available  to  every  member  of  the  guild,  only  allot- 
ting, after  successful  trial  of  them,  a  certain  reward  to  the  inven- 
tors. 

For  these,  and  many  other  such  purposes,  such  halls  will  be 
again,  I  trust,  fully  established,  and  then,  in  the  paintings  and 
decorations  of  them,  especial  efibrt  ought  to  be  made  to  express  the 
worthiness  and  honourableness  of  the  trade  for  whose  members 
they  are  founded.  For  I  believe  one  of  the  worst  symptoms  of 
modern  society  to  be,  its  notion  of  great  inferiority,  and  ungentle- 
manliness,  as  necessarily  belonging  to  the  character  of  a  tradesman. 
I  believe  tradesmen  may  be,  ought  to  be — often  are,  more  gentle- 
men than  idle  and  useless  people :  and  I  believe  that  art  may  do 
noble  work  by  recording  in  the  hall  of  each  trade,  the  services 
which  men  belonging  to  that  trade  have  done  for  their  country, 
both  preserving  the  portraits,  and  recording  the  important  incidents 
ill  the  lives,  of  those  who  have  made  great  advances  in  commerce 
and  civilization.  I  cannot  follow  out  this  subject,  it  branches  too 
far,  and  in  too  many  directions;  besides,  I  have  no  doubt  you  will 
at  once  see  and  accept  the  truth  of  the  main  principle,  and  be  able 
to  think  it  out  for  yourselves.  I  would  fain  also  have  said  some- 
thing cf  what  might  be  done,  in  the  same  manner,  for  almshouses 
and  hospitals,  and  for  what,  as  I  shall  try  to  explain  in  notes  to 
this  lecture,  we  may  hope  to  see,  some  day,  established  with  a 
different  meaning  in  their  name  than  that  they  now  bear — work- 
houses; but  I  have  detained  you  too  long  already,  and  cannot 
permit  myself  to  trespass  further  on  your  patience  except  only  to 


90  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OP    AHT.  [lEOI.    II 

vecapilulate,  in  closing,  the  simple  principles  respecting  wealth 
which  we  have  gathered  during  the  course  of  our  inquiry ;  prin 
ciples  which  are  nothing  naore  than  the  literal  and  practical  accep- 
tance of  the  saying,  which  is  in  all  good  men's  mouths ;  namely 
that  they  are  stewards  or  ministers  of  whatever  talents  are 
entrusted  to  them.  Only,  is  it  not  a  strange  thing,  that  while  we 
more  or  less  accept  the  meaning  of  that  saying,  so  long  as  it  is 
considered  metaphorical,  we  never  accept  its  meaning  in  its 
own  terms  ?  You  know  the  lesson  is  given  us  under  the  form  of  a 
story  about  money.  Money  was  given  to  the  servants  to  make  use 
of:  the  unprofitable  servant  dug  in  the  earth,  and  hid  his  Lord's 
money.  Well,  we,  in  our  poetical  and  spiritual  application  of  this, 
say,  that  of  course  money  doesn't  mean  money,  it  means  wit,  it 
means  intellect,  it  means  influence  in  high  quarters,  it  means  everv- 
thing  in  the  world  except  itself.  And  do  not  you  see  what  a 
pretty  and  pleasant  come-ofi"  there  is  for  most  of  us,  in  this  spiritual 
application  ?  Of  course,  if  we  had  wit,  we  would  use  it  for  the 
good  of  our  fellow-creatures.  But  we  haven't  wit.  Of  course,  if 
we  had  influence  with  the  bishops,  we  would  use  it  for  the  good  of 
the  Church ;  but  we  haven't  any  influence  with  the  bishops.  Of 
course,  if  we  had  political  power,  we  would  use  it  for  the  good  of 
the  nation ;  but  we  have  no  political  power ;  we  have  no  talents 
entrusted  to  us  of  any  sort  or  kind.  It  is  true  we  have  a  little 
money,  but  the  parable  can't  possibly  mean  anything  so  vulgar 
as  money  ;  our  money's  our  own. 

I  believe,  if  you  think  seriously  of  this  matter,  you  will  feel  thai 
the  first  and  most  literal  application  is  just  as  necessary  a  one  as 
any  other — that  the  story  does  very  specially  mean  what  it  says — 
plain  money ;  and  that  the  reason  we  don't  at  once  believe  it  does 
so,  is  a  sort  of  tacit  idea  that  while  thought,  wit,  and  intellect, 
and  fil  power  of  birth  and  position,  are  indeed  given  to  us,  and, 
therefore,  to  be  laid  out  for  the  Giver, — our  wealth  has  not  been 
given  to  us ;  but  we  have  worked  for  it,  and  have  a  right  to  spend 


LECT.    II.]  IV.    DISTRIBUTION.  91 

it  as  we  choose.  1  think  you  will  find  that  is  the  real  substance 
of  our  understanding  in  this  matter.  Beauty,  we  say,  is  given  bj 
God — it  is  a  talent ;  strength  is  given  by  God — it  is  a  talent ;  po- 
sition is  given  by  God — it  is  a  talent ;  but  money  is  proper  wagca 
for  our  day's  work — it  is  not  a  talent,  it  is  a  due.  We  may  justly 
spend  it  on  ourselves,  if  we  have  worked  for  it. 

And  there  would  be  some  shadow  of  excuse  for  this,  were  it  not 
that  the  very  power  of  making  the  money  is  itself  only  one  of  the 
applications  of  that  intellect  or  strength  which  we  confess  t(»  be 
talents.  Why  is  one  man  richer  than  another?  Because  he  is 
more  industrious,  more  persevering,  and  more  sagacious.  Well, 
who  made  him  more  persevering  and  more  sagacious  than  others  ? 
That  power  of  endurance,  that  quickness  of  apprehension,  that  calm- 
ness of  judgment,  which  enable  him  to  seize  the  opportunities  that 
others  lose,  and  persist  in  the  hues  of  conduct  in  which  others 
fail — are  these  not  talents  ? — are  they  not  in  the  present  state 
of  the  woWd,  among  the  most  distinguished  and  influential  of  men 
tal  gifts  ?  And  is  it  not  wonderful,  that  while  we  should  be  utter- 
ly ashamed  to  use  a  superiority  of  body,  in  order  to  thrust  our 
weaker  companions  aside  from  some  place  of  advantage,  we 
unhesitatingly  use  our  superiorities  of  mind  to  thrust  them  back 
from  whatever  good  that  sti'ength  of  mind  can  attain.  You  would 
be  indignant  if  you  saw  a  strong  man  walk  into  a  theatre  or  a 
lecture-room,  and,  calmly  choosing  the  best  place,  take  his  feeble 
neighbour  by  the  shoulder,  and  turn  him  out  of  it  into  the  back 
seats,  or  the  street.  You  would  be  equally  indignant  if  you  saw  a 
Btout  fellow  thrust  himself  up  to  a  table  where  some  hungry  chil- 
dren were  being  fed,  and  reach  his  arm  over  their  heads  and  take 
their  bread  from  them.  But  you  are  not  the  least  indignant  if 
when  a  man  has  stoutness  of  thonght  and  ^wiftness  of  capacity,  and, 
instead  of  being  long-armed  only,  has  the  much  greater  gift  of 
being  long-headed — you  think  it  perfectly  just  that  he  should  use 
his  intellect  to  take  the  bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  all  the  othej 


92  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.      ~  [lECT.    U 

men  in  the  town  who  are  of  the  same  trade  with  him ;  or  use  bis 
breadth  and  sweep  of  sight  to  gather  some  branch  of  the  com- 
merce of  the  country  into  one  great  cobweb,  of  which  he  is  him- 
self to  be  the  central  spider,  making  every  thread  vibrate  with  the 
points  of  his  claws,  and  commanding  every  avenue  with  the  facets  of 
his  eyes.     You  see  no  injustice  in  this. 

But  there  is  injustice ;  and,  let  us  trust,  one  of  which  honour- 
able men  will  at  no  very  distant  period  disdain  to  be  guilty.  In 
some  degree,  however,  it  is  indeed  not  unjust ;  in  some  degree  it  is 
necessary  and  intended.  It  is  assuredly  just  that  idleness  should  be 
surpassed  by  energy ;  that  the  widest  influence  should  be  possessed 
by  those  who  are  best  able  to  wield  it ;  and  that  a  wise  man,  at 
the  end  of  his  career,  should  be  better  off  than  a  fool.  But  for 
that  reason,  is  the  fool  to  be  wretched,  utterly  crushed  down,  and 
left  in  all  the  suffering  which  his  conduct  and  capacity  naturally 
inflict? — Not  so.  What  do  you  suppose  fools  were  made  for? 
That  you  might  tread  upon  them,  and  starve  the'm,  and  get 
the  better  of  them  in  every  possible  way  ?  By  no  means.  They 
were  made  that  wise  people  might  take  care  of  them.  That  is 
the  true  and  plain  fact  concerning  the  relativ^ns  of  every  strong  and 
wise  man  to  the  world  about  him.  He  has  his  strength  given  him, 
not  that  he  may  crush  the  weak,  but  that  he  may  support  and 
guide  them.  In  his  own  household  he  is  to  be  the  guide  and  the 
support  of  his  children ;  out  of  his  household  he  is  still  to  be  the 
father,  that  is,  the  guide  and  support  of  the  weak  and  the  poor ; 
not  merely  of  the  meritoriously  weak  and  the  innocently  poor,  but 
of  the  guiltily  and  punishably  poor ;  of  the  men  who  ought  to  have 
Known  better — of  the  poor  who  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  their  selves, 
It  is  nothing  to  give  pension  and  cottage  to  the  widow  who  hr4S 
lost  her  son ;  it  is  nothing  to  give  food  and  medicine  to  the  work- 
man who  has  broken  his  arm,  or  the  decrepit  woman  wasting  in 
sickness.  But  it  is  something  to  use  your  time  and  strength  to  war 
with  the  waywardness  and  thoughtlessness  of  mankind ;  to  keep 


LKCT.    II.]  IV.    DISTRIBUTION.  93 

the  erring  workman  in  your  service  till  you  have  made  him  an 
unerring  one ;  and  to  direct  your  fellow-mercliant  to  the  opportunity 
whicli  his  dulness  would  have  lost.  This  is  much  ;  but  it  is  yet 
more,  when  you  have  fully  achieved  the  superiority  which  is  due  to 
you,  and  acquired  the  wealth  which  is  the  fitting  reward  of  your 
sagacity,  if  you  solemnly  accept  the  responsibility  of  it,  as  it  is  the 
helm  and  guide  of  labour  far  and  near.  For  you  who  have  it  in 
your  hands,  are  in  reality  the  pilots  of  the  power  and  effort  of  the 
State.  It  is  entrusted  to  you  as  an  authority  to  be  used  for  good 
or  evil,  just  as  completely  as  kingly  authority  was  ever  given  to  a 
prince,  or  military  command  to  a  captain.  And,  according  to  the 
quantity  of  it  that  you  have  in  your  hands,  you  are  the  arbiters  of 
the  will  and  work  of  England ;  and  the  whole  issue,  whether  the 
work  of  the  State  shall  suffice  for  the  State  or  not,  depends  upon 
you.  You  may  stretch  out  your  sceptre  over  the  beads  of  the 
English  labourers,  and  say  to  them,  as  they  stoop  to  its  waving, 
"Subdue  this  obstacle  that  has  bafilcd  our  fathers,  put  away  thia 
plague  that  consumes  our  children  ;  water  these  dry  places,  plough 
these  desert  ones,  carry  this  food  to  those  who  are  in  hunger; 
carry  this  light  to  those  who  are  in  darkness;  carry  this  life  to 
those  who  are  in  death  ;"  or  on  the  other  side  you  may  say  to  hei 
labourers :  "  Here  am  I ;  this  power  is  in  my  hand ;  come,  build  a 
mound  here  for  me  to  be  throned  upon,  high  and  wide ;  come,  make 
c'owns  for  my  head,  that  men  may  sec  them  shine  from  far  away; 
come,  weave  tapestries  for  my  feet,  that  I  may  tread  softly  on  the 
silk  and  purple ;  come,  dance  before  me,  that  I  may  be  gay ;  and 
sing  sweetly  to  me,  that  I  may  slumber;  so  shall  I  live  in  joy,  and 
die  in  honour."  And  better  than  such  an  honourable  death,  it 
were  that  the  day  had  perished  wherein  we  were  born,  and  the 
night  in  which  it  was  said  there  is  a  child  conceived. 

I  trust  that  in  a  little  while,  there  will  be  few  of  our  rich  men 
who,  through  carelessness  or  covetousness,  thus  forfeit  the  glorioui 
«>ffice  which  is  intended  for  their  hands.     I  said,  just  now,  that 


94  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART.  [lECT.    II 

wealth  iU-used  was  as  the  net  of  the  spicier,  entangling  and 
destroying:  but  wealth  well  used,  is  as  the  net  of  the  sacred 
fisher  who  gathers  souls  of  men  out  of  the  deep.  A  time  will 
come — I  do  not  think  even  now  it  is  far  from  us— -when  this 
golden  net  of  the  world's  wealth  will  be  spread  abvoad  as  .the, 
flaming  meshes  of  morning  cloud  are  over  the  sky ;  l^earing  with 
them  the  joy  of  light  and  the  dew  of  the  morning,  as  well  as  the 
summons  to  honourable  and  peaceful  toil.  What  less  can  we  hope 
from  your  wealth  than  this,  rich  men  of  England,  when  once  you 
feel  fully  how,  by  the  strength  of  your  possessions — not,  observe,  by 
the  exhaustion,  but  by  the  administration  of  them  and  the  power 
— you  can  direct  the  acts, — command  the  energies-  -inform  the 
ignorance, — prolong  the  existence,  of  the  whole  hum  ,n  race ;  and 
how,  even  of  worldly  wisdom,  which  man  employs  frkithfully,  it  is 
true,  not  only  that  her  ways  are  pleasantness,  lut  that  her  paths  are 
peace ;  and  that,  for  all  the  children  of  men,  as  well  as  for  those 
to  whom  she  is  given,  Length  of  days  are  in  her  right  "huid,  v  in 
he?  left  hind  Riches  and  Honour  ? 


A.DDBFDA.  94 


ADDENDA. 


Note,  p.  20. — "  Fatherly  authority. ^^ 

This  statement  could  not,  of  course,  be  heard  without  displeasure 
by  a  certain  class  of  politicians ;  and  in  one  of  the  notices  of  these 
lectures  given  in  the  Manchester  journals  at  the  time,  endeavour 
was  jnade  to  get  quit  of  it  by  referring  to  the  Divine  authority,  as 
the  only  Paternal  power  with  respect  to  which  men  were  truly 
styled  "  brethren."  Of  course  it  is  so,  and,  equally  of  course,  all 
human  government  is  nothing  else  than  the  executive  expression 
of  this  Divine  authority.  The  moment  government  ceases  to  be 
the  practical  enforcement  of  Divine  law,  it  is  tyranny ;  and  the 
meaning  which  I  attach  to  the  words,  "  paternal  government,"  is 
in  more  extended  terms,  simply  this — "  The  executive  fulfilment, 
by  formal  human  methods,  of  the  will  of  the  Father  of  mankind 
respecting  Ilis  children."  I  could  not  give  such  a  definition  of 
Government  as  this  in  a  popular  lecture;  and  even  in  written 
(brin,  it  will  necessarily  suggest  many  objections,  of  which  1  must 
notice  and  answer  the  most  probable. 

Only,  in  order  to  avoid  the  recurrence  of  such  tiresome  phrases 
as  "  it  may  be  answered  in  the  second  place,"  and  "  it  will  be 
objected  in  the  third  place,"  &c.,  I  will  ask  the  reader's  leave  to 
arrange  the  disciission  in  the  form  of  simple  dialogue,  letting  O. 
stand  for  objector,  and  R.  for  response. 

0. — You  define  your  paternal  government  to  be  the  executive 
fulfilment,  by  formal  human  methods,  of  the  Divine  will.  But, 
Assuredly,  that  will  cannot  stand  in  need  of  aid  or  expression  from 
human  laws.     It  cannot  fail  of  its  fulfilment. 

R. —  In  the  final  sense  it  cannot;  and  in  that  sense,  men  who 


96  POLITICAL    RCONOMY     OF    ART. 

are  committing  murder  and  stealing  are  fulfilling  the  will  of  God 
as  much  as  the  best  and  kindest  people  in  the  world.  But  in  the 
limited  and  present  sense,  the  only  sense  with  which  we  have  any- 
thing to  do,  God's  will  concerning  man  is  fulfilled  by  some  men 
and  thwarted  by  others.  And  those  men  who  either  persuade  oi 
enforce  the  doing  of  it,  stand  towards  those  who  are  rebellious 
against  it  exactly  in  the  position  of  faithful  children  in  a  famil}'^, 
who,  when  the  father  is  out  of  sight,  either  compel  or  persuade 
the  rest  to  do  as  their  father  would  have  them,  were  he  present : 
and  in  so  far  as  they  are  expressing  and  maintaining,  for  the  time, 
the  paternal  authority,  they  exercise,  in  the  exact  sense  in  which  T 
mean  the  phrase  to  be  understood,  paternal  government  over  the  rest. 

0. — But,  if  Providence  has  left  a  liberty  to  man  in  many  things 
in  order  to  prove  him,  why  should  human  law  abridge  that  liberty, 
and  take  upon  itself  to  compel  what  the  great  Lawgiver  does  not 
compel  ? 

R. — It  is  confessed,  in  the  enactment  of  any  law  whatsoever, 
that  human  lawgivers  have  a  right  to  do  this.  For,  if  you  have 
no  right  to  abridge  any  of  the  liberty  which  Providence  has  left 
to  man,  you  have  no  right  to  punish  any  one  for  committing  mur- 
der or  robbery.  You  ought  to  leave  them  to  the  punishment  of 
God  and  Nature.  But  if  you  think  yourself  under  obligation  to 
punish,  as  far  as  human  laws  can,  the  violation  of  the  will  of  God 
by  these  great  sins,  you  are  certainly  under  the  same  obligation  to 
punish,  with  proportionately  less  punishment,  the  violation  of  His 
will  in  less  sins. 

0. — No;  you  must  not  attempt  to  punish  less  sins  by  law, 
because  you  cannot  properly  define  nor  "Ascertain  them.  Every- 
body can  determine  whether  murder  has  been  committed  or  not, 
but  you  cannot  determine  how  far  people  have  been  unjust  or 
cruel  in  minor  matters,  and  therefore  cannot  ma^e  or  execute  hiw6 
concerning  minor  matters. 

R, — If  I  propose  to  you  to  punish  faults  which  cannot  be  defined, 
or  to  execute  laws  which  cannot  be  made  equitable,  reject  the 
laws  I  propose.     But  do  not  generally  object  to  the  principle  of  law. 

0. — Yes ;  I  generally  object  to  the  principle  of  law  as  applied 
to  minor  things;  because,  if  you  could  succeed  (which  you  can 


ADDENDA.  97 

not)  in  regulating  the  entire  conduct  of  men  by  law  in  little  thinsrs 
as  well  as  great,  you  vvould  take  away  from  lunnan  life  all  its  pro- 
bationary character,  and  render  many  virtues  and  pleasures  impos- 
sible. You  would  reduce  virtue  to  the  movement  of  a  machine, 
instead  of  the  act  of  a  spirit. 

R. — You  have  just  said,  parenthetically,  and  I  fully  and  will- 
ingly admit  it,  that  it  is  impossible  to  regulate  all  minor  matters 
by  law.  Is  it  not  probable,  therefore,  that  the  degree  in  which  it 
is  possible  to  regulate  them  by  it,  is  also  the  degree  in  which  it  is 
right  to  regulate  them  by  it?  Or  what  other  means  of  judgment 
will  you  employ,  to  separate  the  things  which  ought  to  be  for- 
mally regulated  from  the  things  which  ought  not?  You  admit 
that  great  sins  should  be  legally  repressed ;  but  you  say  that  small 
sins  should  not  be  legally  repressed.  How  do  you  distinguish 
between  great  and  small  sins;  and  how  do  you  intend  to  deter- 
mine, or  do  you  in  practice  of  daily  life  determine,  on  what  occa 
si  on  you  should  compel  people  to  do  right,  and  on  what  occasion 
you  should  leave  them  the  option  of  doing  wrong? 

0. — I  think  you  cannot  make  any  accurate  or  logical  distinc 
tion  in  such  matters;  but  that  common  sense  and  instinct  have,  in 
all  civilized  nations,  indicated  certain  crimes  of  great  social  harm 
fulness,  such  as  murder,  theft,  adultery,  slander,  and  such  like, 
which  it  is  proper  to  repress  legally;  and  that  common  sense  and 
instinct  indicate  also  the  kind  of  crimes  which  it  is  proper  foi 
laws  to  let  alone,  such  as  miserliness,  ill-natured  speaking,  and 
many  of  those  commercial  dishonesties  which  I  have  a  notion  you 
want  your  paternal  government  to  interfere  with. 

E. — I'ray  do  not  alarm  yourself  about  what  my  paternal  go- 
vernment is  likely  to  interfere  with,  but  keep  to  the  matter  in 
hand.  You  say  that  "  common  sense  and  instinct"  have,  in  all 
civilized  nations,  distinguished  between  the  sins  that  ought  to  be 
legally  dealt  with  and  that  ought  not.  Do  you  mean  that  the 
laws  of  all  civilized  nations  are  perfect? 

0. — No ;  certainly  not. 

R. — Or  that  they  are  perfect  at  least  in  their  discrimination  of 
what  crimes  they  should  deal  with,  and  what  crimes  they  should 
let  alone  ? 


98  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ABT. 

0. — No ;  not  exactly. 

R. — What  do  you  mean  then  ? 

0. — I  mean  that  the  general  tendency  is  right  in  the  laws  o\ 
civilized  nations;  and  that,  in  due  course  of  time,  natural  sense 
^nd  instinct  point  out  the  matters  they  should  be  brought  to  bear 
upon.  And  each  question  of  legislation  must  be  made  a  separate 
Bubject  of  inquiry  as  it  presents  itself:  you  cannot  fix  any  general 
principles  about  what  should  be  dealt  with  legally,  and  what 
ehould  not. 

R. — Supposing  it  to  be  so,  do  you  think  there  are  any  points 
in  which  our  English  legislation  is  capable  of  amendment,  as  it 
bears  on  commercial  and  economical  matters,  in  this  present  time  ? 

0. — Of  course  I  do. 

R. — Well,  then,  let  us  discuss  these  together  quietly ;  and  if  the 
points,  that  I  want  amended  seem  to  you  incapable  of  amendment, 
or  not  in  need  of  amendment,  say  so  :  but  don't  object,  at  starting, 
to  the  mere  proposition  of  applying  law  to  things  which  have  not 
had  law  applied  to  them  before.  You  have  admitted  the  fitnesy 
of  my  expression,  "  paternal  government :"  it  only "  has  been, 
and  remains  a  question  between  us,  how  far  such  governiuent 
should  extend.  Perhaps  you  would  like  it  only  to  regulate,  among 
the  children,  the  length  of  their  lessons ;  and  perhaps  I  should  like 
it  also  to  regulate  the  hardness  of  their  cricket-balls :  but  cannot 
you  wait  quietly  till  you  know  what  I  want  it  to  do,  before  quar- 
relling with  the  thing  itself? 

0. — No ;  I  cannot  wait  quietly  :  in  fact  I  don't  see  any  use  in 
beginning  such  a  discussion  at  all,  because  I  am  quite  sure  from 
the  first,  that  you  want  to  meddle  with  things  that  you  have  no 
business  with,  and  to  interfere  with  healthy  liberty  of  action  in  all 
sorts  of  ways ;  and  I  know  that  you  can't  propose  any  laws  that 
would  be  of  real  use.* 

*  If  the  reader  is  displeased  with  me  for  putting  this  foolish  speech  into 
bis  mouth,  I  entreat  his  pardon  ;  but  he  may  be  assured  that  it  is  a  speech 
which  would  be  made  by  many  people,  and  the  substance  of  which  would  be 
tacitly  felt  by  many  more,  at  this  point  of  the  discussion.  I  have  really 
tried,  up  to  this  point,  to  make  the  objector  as  intelligent  a  person  as  it  \» 
possible  for  an  author  to  imagine  anybody  to  be,  who  diflfers  with  him 


ADDENDA.  99 

R. —  ff  yon  indeed  know  that,  you  would  be  wrong  to  hear  me 
any  farther.  But  if  you  are  only  in  painful  doubt  about  me,  which 
makes  you  unwilling  to  run  the  risk  of  wasting  your  t^aie,  1  wili 
tell  you  beforehand  what  I  really  do  think  about  this  rme  liberty 
of  action,  namely,  that  whenever  we  can  make  a  perfotly  equita- 
ble law  about  any  matter,  or  even  a  law  seeming,  on  the  whole, 
more  just  conduct  than  unjust,  we  ought  to  make  that  law ;  and 
that  there  will  yet,  on  these  conditions,  always  remain  a  number 
of  matters  respecting  which  legalism  and  formalism  are  impossible  ; 
enough,  and  more  than  enough,  to  exercise  all  human  powers  of 
iudividual  judgment,  and  afford  all  kinds  of  scope  to  individual 
character.  I  think  this ;  but  of  course  it  can  only  be  proved  by 
separate  examination  of  the  possibilities  of  formal  restraint  in  each 
given  field  of  action ;  and  these  two  lectures  are  nothing  more 
than  a  sketch  of  such  a  detailed  examination  in  one  field,  namely, 
that  of  art.  You  will  find,  however,  one  or  two  other  remarks  on 
such  possibilities  in  the  next  note. 


Note  2nd,  p.  22. — "  Eight  to  jmblic  support^ 

It  did  not  appear  to  me  desirable,  in  the  course  of  the  spoken 
lecture,  to  enter  into  details  or  ofi"er  suggestions  on  the  questions 
of  the  regulation  of  labour  and  distribution  of  relietj  as  it  would 
have  been  impossible  to  do  so  without  touching  on  many  disputed 
or  disputable  points,  not  easily  handled  before  a  general  audience. 
But  I  must  now  supply  what  is  wanting  to  make  my  general 
statement  clear. 

1  believe,  in  the  first  place,  that  no  Christian  nation  has  any 
business  to  see  one  of  its  members  in  distress  without  helping  him, 
*hough,  perhaps,  at  the  same  time  punishing  him  :  help,  of  co'^-i'se 
— in  nine  cases  out  of  ten — meaning  guidance,  much  more  than 
gift,  and,  therefore,  interference  with  liberty.  When  a  peasant 
mother  sees  one  of  her  careless  children  fall  into  a  ditch,  her  first 
proceeding  is  to  pull  him  out;  her  second,  to  box  his  ears;  hei 
third,  ordinarily,  to  lead  him  carefully  a  little  way  by  the  hand 


100  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 

or  send  him  home  for  the  rest  of  the  day.  The  child  usuall) 
cries,  and  very  often  would  clearly  prefer  remaining  in  the  ditch 
and  if  he  understood  any  of  the  terms  of  poHtics,  would  certain!} 
express  resentment  at  the  interference  with  his  individual  liberty : 
but  the  mother  has  done  her  duty.  Whereas  the  usual  call  of  the. 
mother  nation  to  any  of  her  children,  under  such  circumstances, 
has  lately  been  nothing  more  than  the  foxhunter's, — "  Stay  still 
there ;  I  shall  clear  you."  And  if  we  always  could  clear  them, 
their  requests  to  be  left  in  muddy  independence  might  be  some- 
times allowed  by  kind  people,  or  their  cries  for  help  disdained  by 
unkind  ones.  But  we  can't  clear  them.  The  whole  nation  is,  in 
fact,  bound  together,  as  men  are  by  ropes  on  a  glacier — if  one 
falls,  the  rest  must  either  lift  him  or  drag  him  along  with  them* 
as  dead  weight,  not  without  much  increase  of  danger  to  themselves. 
And  the  law  of  right  being  manifestly  in  this,  as,  whether  mani- 
festly or  not,  it  is  always,  the  law  of  prudence,  the  only  question 
is,  how  this  wholesome  help  and  interference  are  to  be  adminis- 
tered. 

The  first  interference  should  be  in  education.  In  order  that 
men  may  be  able  to  support  themselves  when  they  are  grown, 
their  strength  must  be  properly  developed  while  they  are  young ; 
and  the  state  should  always  see  to  this — not  allowing  their  health 
to  be  broken  by  too  early  labour,  nor  their  powers  to  be  wasted 
for  want  of  knowledge.  Some  questions  connected  with  this 
matter  are  noticed  farther  on  under  the  head  "  trial  schools :"  one 
point  I  must  notice  here,  that  I  believe  all  youths  of  whatever 
rank,  ought  to  learn  some  manual  trade  thoroughly ;  for  it  is  quite 
wonderful  how  much  a  man's  views  of  life  are  cleared  by  the 
attainment  of  the  capacity  of  doing  any  one  thing  well  with  his 
hands  and  arras.  For  a  long  time,  what  right  life  there  was  in  the 
upper  classes  of  Europe  depended  in  no  small  degree  on  the 

*  It  ia  very  curious  to  watch  the  efforts  of  two  shopkeepers  to  ruin  each 
otlier,  neither  having  the  least  idea  that  his  ruined  neighbour  must  eventually 
be  supported  at  his  own  expense,  with  an  increase  of  poor  rates ;  and  that 
the  contest  between  them  is  not  in  reality  which  shall  get  everything  foi 
himself  but  which  shall  first  take  upon  himself  and  his  customers  the  grain* 
tous  maintenance  of  the  other's  family. 


ADDENDA.  101 

necessity  wliich  each  man  was  under  of  being  able  to  fence ;  at 
tliis  day,  the  most  useful  things  which  boys  learn  at  public  schools 
arc,  I  believe,  riding,  rowing,  and  cricketing.  But  it  would  be  far 
better  that  members  of  Parliament  should  be  able  to  plough 
straight,  and  make  a  horseshoe,  than  only  to  feather  oars  neatly 
or  point  their  toes  prettily  in  stirrups.  Then,  in  literary  and 
scientific  teaching,  the  great  point  of  economy  is  to  give  the  dis- 
cipline of  it  through  knowledge  which  will  immediately  bear  on 
practical  life.  Our  literary  work  has  long  been  economically 
useless  to  us  because  too  much  concerned  with  dead  languages ; 
and  our  scientific  work  will  yet,  for  some  time,  be  a  good  deal  lost, 
because  scientific  men  are  too  fond  or  too  vain  of  their  systems, 
and  waste  the  student's  time  in  endeavouring  to  give  him  large 
views,  and  make  him  perceive  interesting  connections  of  facts ; 
svhen  there  is  not  one  student,  no,  nor  one  man,  in  a  thousand, 
who  can  feel  the  beauty  of  a  system,  or  even  take  it  clearly  into 
his  head ;  but  nearly  all  men  can  understand,  and  most  will  be 
interested  in,  the  facts  which  bear  on  daily  life.  Botanists  have 
discovered  some  wonderful  connection  between  nettles  and  figs, 
which  a  cowboy  who  will  never  see  a  ripe  fig  in  his  life  need  not 
be  at  all  troubled  about ;  but  it  will  be  interesting  to  him  to  know 
what  effect  nettles  have  on  hay,  and  what  taste  they  will  give  to 
porridge  ;  and  it  will  give  him  nearly  a  new  life  if  he  can  be  got 
but  once,  in  a  spring-time,  to  look  well  at  the  beautiful  circle*-  of 
the  white  nettle  blossom,  and  work  out  with  his  schoolmaster  the 
Hirves  of  its  petals,  and  the  way  it  is  set  on  its  central  mast.  So, 
the  principle  of  chemical  equivalents,  beautiful  as  it  is,  matters  far 
less  to  a  peasant  boy,  and  even  to  most  sons  of  gentlemen,  than  their 
knowing  how  to  find  whether  the  water  is  wholesome  in  the  back- 
kitchen  cistern,  or  whether  the  seven-acre  field  wants  sand  or  chalk. 
Uaving,  then,  directed  the  studies  of  our  youth  so  as  to  make 
them  practically  serviceable  men  at  the  time  of  their  entrance  into 
life,  that  entrance  should  always  be  ready  for  them  in  cases  where 
llieir  private  circumstances  present  no  opening.  There  ought  to 
be  government  establishments  for  every  trade,  in  which  all  youths 
who  desired  it  should  be  received  as  apprentices  on  their  leaving 
school ;  and  men  thrown  out  of  work  received  at  all  times.     At 


102  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    AUT. 

these  government  manufactories  the  discipline  should  be  strict, 
and  the  wages  steady,  not  varying  at  all  in  proportion  to  the 
demand  for  the  article,  but  only  in  proportion  to  the  price  of  food  ' 
the  commodities  produced  being  laid  up  in  store  to  meet  sudder 
demands,  and  sudden  fluctuations  in  prices  prevented  : — that  gra- 
dual and  necessary  fluctuation  only  being  allowed  which  is  pro- 
perly consequent  on  larger  or  more  limited  supply  of  raw  material 
and  other  natural  causes.  When  there  was  a  visible  tendency  to 
produce  a  glut  of  any  commodity,  that  tendency  should  be  checked 
by  directing  the  youth  at  the  government  schools  into  other 
trades;  and  the  yearly  surplus  of  commodities  should  be  the  prin- 
cipal means  of  government  provision  for  the  poor.  That  provision 
should  be  large,  and  not  disgraceful  to  them.  At  present  there 
are  very  strange  notions  in  the  public  mind  respecting  the  receiv- 
ing of  alms :  most  people  are  willing  to  take  them  in  the  form  of 
a  pension  from  government,  but  unwilling  to  take  them  in  the  form 
of  a  pension  from  their  parishes.  There  may  be  some  reason  for  this 
singular  prejudice,  in  the  fact  of  the  government  pension  being 
usually  given  as  a  definite  acknowledgment  of  some  service  done 
to  the  country; — but  the  parish  pension  is,  or  ought  to  be,  given 
precisely  on  the  same  terms.  A  labourer  serves  his  country  with 
his  spade,  just  as  a  man  in  the  middle  ranks  of  life  serves  it  with 
his  sword,  pen,  or  lancet ;  if  the  service  is  less,  and  therefore  the 
wages  during  health  less,  then  the  reward,  when  health  is  broken, 
may  be  less,  but  not,  therefore,  less  honourable ;  and  it  ought  to 
be  quite  as  natural  and  straightforward  a  matter  for  a  labourer  to 
take  his  pension  from  his  parish,  because  he  has  deserved  well  of 
his  parish,  as  for  a  man  in  higher  rank  to  take  his  pension  from 
his  country,  because  he  has  deserved  well  of  his  country.  If  there 
be  any  disgrace  in  coming  to  the  parish,  because  it  may  imply 
improvidence  in  early  life,  much  more  is  there  disgrace  in  coming 
to  the  government ;  since  improvidence  is  far  less  justifiable  tti  % 
nighly  educated  than  in  an  imperfectly  educated  man ;  and  far 
less  justifiable  in  a  high  rank,  where  extravagance  must  have  been 
luxury,  than  in  a  low  rank,  where  it  may  only  have  been  comfort. 
So  that  the  real  fact  of  the  matter  is,  that  people  will  take  alms 
delightedly,  consisting  of  a  carriage  and  footmen,  because  those 


aouenda.  108 

do  not  look  like  alms  to  the  people  in  tlie  street ;  Init  the}  wil 
not  take  alms  consisting  only  of  bread  and  water  and  euals, 
because  eveiybody  would  understand  what  those  meant.  Mind, 
I  do  not  want  any  one  to  refuse  the  carriage  who  ought  to  ba\  x' 
it;  but  neither  do  I  want  them  to  refuse  the  coals.  I  should 
indeed  be  sorry  if  any  change  in  our  views  on  these  subjects 
involved  the  least  lessening  of  self-dependence  in  the  English 
mind  ;  but  the  common  shrinking  of  men  from  the  acceptance  ol 
public  charity  is  not  self-dependence,  but  mere  base  and  selfish 
pride.  It  is  not  that  they  are  unwilling  to  live  at  their  neighbours' 
expense,  but  that  they  are  unwilling  to  confess  they  do  ;  it  is  noi 
dependence  they  wish  to  avoid,  but  gratitude.  They  will  take 
places  in  which  they  know  there  is  nothing  to  be  done — they  will 
borrow  money  they  know  they  cannot  repay — they  will  carry  on 
a  losing  business  with  other  people's  capital — they  will  cheat  the 
public  in  their  shops,  or  sponge  on  their  friends  at  their  houses ; 
but  to  say  plainly  they  are  poor  men,  who  need  the  nation's  help, 
and  go  into  an  almshouse — this  they  loftily  repudiate,  and  virtu- 
ously prefer  being  thieves  to  being  paupers. 

I  trust  that  these  deceptive  efibrts  of  dishonest  men  to  appear 
independent,  and  the  agonizing  efforts  of  unfortunate  men  to 
remain  independent,  may  both  be  in  some  degree  checked  by  a 
better  administration  and  understanding  of  laws  respecting  the 
poor.  But  the  ordinances  for  relief  and  the  ordinances  for  labour 
must  go  together ;  otherwise  distress  caused  by  misfortune  will 
always  be  confounded,  as  it  is  now,  with  distress  caused  by  idleness, 
unthrift,  and  fraud.  It  is  only  when  the  state  watches  and  guides 
the  middle  life  of  men,  that  it  can,  without  disgrace  to  them,  pro- 
tect their  old  age,  acknowledging  in  that  protection  that  they 
have  done  their  duty,  or  at  least  some  portion  of  their  duty,  in 
better  days. 

I  know  well  how  strange,  fanciful,  or  impracticable  these  sug- 
(^estions  will  appear  to  most  of  the  business  men  of  this  day  ;  men 
who  conceive  the  proper  state  of  the  world  to  be  simply  that  of  a 
vast  ar.d  disorganized  mob,  scrambling  each  for  what  he  can  got, 
trampling  d(>wn  its  children  and  ol'd  men  in  the  mire,  and  doing 
what  work  it  finds  tows/  be  done  with  any  irregular  squad  of  labour 


104  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF   ART. 

ers  it  can  bribe  or  inveigle  together,  and  afterwards  scatter  to  star- 
vation.  A  great  deal  may,  indeed,  be  done  in  this  way  by  a  nation 
strong-elbowed  and  strong-hearted  as  we  are — not  easily  frightened 
by  pushing,  nor  discouraged  by  falls.  But  it  is  still  not  the  righl 
way  of  doing  things,  for  people  who  call  themselves  Christians 
Every  so  named  soul  of  man  claims  from  every  other  such  soul, 
protection  and  education  in  childhood — help  or  punishment  in 
middle  life — reward  or  relief,  if  needed,  in  old  age;  all  cf  these 
should  be  completely  and  unstintingly  given,  and  they  can  only  be 
given  by  the  organization  of  such  a  system  as  I  have  described. 


Note  3rd,  p.  25.—"  Trial  Schooh." 

It  may  be  seriously  questioned  by  the  reader  how  much  of  pamt- 
ing  talent  we  really  lose  on  our  present  system,*  and  how  much 

*  It  will  be  observed  that,  in  the  lecture,  it  is  assumed  that  works  of  art  are 
national  treasures ;  and  that  it  is  desirable  to  withdraw  all  the  hands  capable 
■of  painting  or  carving  from  other  employments,  in  order  that  'they  may  pro- 
duce this  kind  of  wealth.  I  do  not,  in  assuming  this,  mean  that  works  of  art 
add  to  the  monetary  resources  of  a  nation,  or  form  part  of  its  wealth,  in  the 
vulgar  sense.  Tlie  result  of  the  sale  of  a  picture  in  the  country  itself  is 
merely  that  a  certain  sum  of  money  is  transferred  from  the  hands  of  B.  the 
purchaser,  to  those  of  A.  the  producer ;  the  sum  ultimately  to  be  distributed 
remaining  the  same,  only  A.  ultimately  spending  it  instead  of  B.,  while  the 
labour  of  A.  has  been  in  the  meantime  withdrawn  from  productive  channels ; 
he  has  painted  a  picture  which  nobody  can  live  upon,  or  live  in,  when  he 
might  have  grown  com  or  built  houses :  when  the  sale  therefore  is  effected 
in  the  country  itself,  it  does  not  add  to,  but  diminishes,  the  monetary  resources 
of  the  country,  except  only  so  far  as  it  may  appear  probable,  on  other  grounds, 
that  A.  is  likely  to  spend  the  sum  he  receives  for  his  picture  more  rationally 
and  usefully  than  B.  would  have  spent  it.  If,  inSeed,  the  picture,  or  other 
work  of  art,  be  sold  in  foreign  countries,  either  the  money  or  the  useful  pro- 
ducts of  the  foreign  country  being  imported  in  exchange  for  it,  such  sale  adds 
to  the  monetary  resources  of  the  seUing,  and  diminishes  those  of  the  purchas- 
ing nation.  But  sound  political  economy,  strange  as  it  may  at  first  appear  to 
Bay  so,  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  separations  between  national  inter- 
ests.  Political  economy  means  the^ management  of  the  afiairs  of  citizens  ;  and 
it  either  regards  exclusively  the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  one  nation,  oi 
the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  the  world  considered  as  one  nation.     Sc 


ADDENDA.  106 

«ve  slumlil  gain  by  the  proposed  trial  schools.  For  it  migl  t  be 
tlioaght,  that  as  matters  stand  at  present,  we  have  moie  painters 
than  we  caight  to  have,  having  so  many  bad  ones,  and  that  all  youths 
who  had  true  painters'  genius  forced  their  way  out  of  obscurity. 

w)ien  a  transaction  between  individuals  which  enriches  A  .  impoverishes  B. 
in  pre^-'jely  the  same  degree,  the  sound  economist  consider*  it  an  unproduc- 
tive !;n.nsaction  between  the  individuals ;  and  if  a  trade  between  two  nationa 
which  enriches  one,  impoverishes  the  other  in  the  same  degree,  the  sound 
econcDiist  considers  it  an  unproductive  trade  between  the  nations.  It  is 
not  a  general  question  of  political  economy,  but  only  a  particular  question 
of  local  expediency,  whether  an  article  in  itself  valueless,  may  bear  a  value 
of  exchange  in  transactions  with  some  other  nation.  The  economist  con- 
siders only  the  actual  value  of  the  thing  done  or  produced;  and  if  he  sees  a 
quantity  of  labour  spent,  for  instance,  by  the  Swiss,  in  producing  woodwork 
for  sale  to  the  English,  he  at  once  sets  the  commercial  impoverishment  of  the 
English  purchaser  against  the  commercial  enrichment  of  the  Swiss  seller;  and 
considers  the  whole  transaction  productive  only  so  far  as  the  woodwork  itself  is  a 
real  addition  to  the  wealth  of  the  world.  For  the  arrangement  of  the  laws  of  a 
nation  so  as  to  procure  the  greatest  advantages  to  itselfj  and  leave  the  smallest 
advantages  to  other  nations,  is  not  a  part  of  the  science  of  political  economy, 
but  merely  a  broad  application  of  the  science  of  fraud.  Considered  thus  in 
the  abstract,  pictures  are  not  an  addition  to  the  monetary  wealth  of  the  world, 
except  in  the  amount  of  pleasure  or  instruction  to  be  got  out  of  them  day  by 
day :  but  there  is  a  certain  protective  effect  on  wealth  exercised  by  works 
of  high  art  which  must  always  be  included  in  the  estimate  of  their  value. 
Generally  speaking,  persons  who  decorate  their  houses  with  pictures,  wDl 
not  spend  so  much  money  in  papers,  carpets,  curtains,  or  other  expensive  and 
perishable  luxuries  as  they  would  otherwise.  Works  of  good  art,  like  books, 
exercise  a  conservative  effect  on  the  rooms  they  are  kept  in  ;  and  the  wall 
of  the  library  or  picture  gallery  remains  undisturbed,  when  those  of  other 
rooms  are  re-papered  or  re-panelled.  Of  course  this  effect  is  still  more  defi- 
nite when  the  picture  is  on  the  walls  themselves,  either  on  canvass  stretched 
into  fixed  shapes  on  their  panels,  or  in  fresco ;  involving,  of  course,  the  pre- 
servation of  tlie  building  from  all  unnecessary  and  capricious  alteration.  And 
gceruUy  speaking,  the  occupation  of  a  large  number  of  hands  in  painting  or 
sculpture  in  any  nation  may  bo  considered  as  tending  to  check  the  disposition 
CO  indulge  in  perishable  luxury.  I  do  not,  however,  in  m}--  assumption  that 
worV?  of  art  are  treasures,  take  much  into  consideration  this  collateral  mone- 
tary result.  I  consider  them  treasures,  merely  as  a  permanent  means  of 
pleasure  and  instruction ;  and  having  at  other  times  tried  to  show  the  several 
ways  in  which  they  can  please  and  teach,  assume  here  tliat  they  are  thuH  uae 
fill ;  and  that  it  is  desirable  to  make  as  many  painters  a.«  we  can. 

5* 


106  .  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 

This  is  1  ot  SO  It  is  difficult  to  anah'se  the  characters  o1"  rn'.nd 
which  cause  youths  to  mistake  their  vocation,  and  to  endeavour  to 
become  artists,  when  they  have  no  true  artist's  gift.  But  the  fact 
is,  that  multitudes  of  young  men  do  this,  and  that  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  living  artists  are  men  who  have  mistaken  tlieir 
vocation.  The  peculiar  circumstances  of  modern  life,  which  exhi- 
bit art  in  almost  every  form  to  the  sight  of  the  youths  in  our  great 
cities,  have  a  natural  tendency  to  fill  their  imaginations  with  bor- 
rowed ideas,  and  their  minds  with  imperfect  science ;  the  raeve  dis- 
like of  mechanical  employments,  either  felt  to  be  irksome,  or 
believed  to  be  degrading,  urges  numbers  of  young  men  to  become 
painters,  in  the  same  temper  in  which  they  would  enlist  or  go  to 
sea ;  others,  the  sons  of  engravers  or  artists,  taught  the  busiaess  ol 
the  art  by  their  parents,  and  having  no  gift  for  it  themselves,  follow 
it  as  the  means  of  livelihood,  in  an  ignoble  patience  ;  or,  if  ambi- 
tious, seek  to  attract  regard,  or  distance  rivalry,  by  fantastic,  mere- 
tricious, or  unprecedented  applications  of  their  mechanical  skill ; 
while  finally,  many,  men  earnest  in  feeling,  and  conscientious  in 
principle,  mistake  their  desire  to  be  useful  for  a  love  of  art,  and 
their  quickness  of  emotion  for  its  capacity,  and  pass  their  lives  in 
painting  moral  and  instructive  pictures,  which  might  almost  justify 
us  in  thinking  nobody  could  be  a  painter  but  a  rogue.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  believe  that  much  of  the  best  artistical  intellect  is 
daily  lost  in  other  avocations.  Generally,  the  temper  which  would 
make  an  admirable  artist  is  humble  and  observant,  capable  of 
taking  much  interest  in  little  things,  and  of  entertaining  itself 
pleasantly  in  the  dullest  circumstances.  Suppose,  added  to  these 
characters,  a  steady  conscientiousness  which  seeks  to  do  its  duty 
wherever  it  may  be  placed,  and  the  power,  denied  to  few  artistical 
minds,  of  ingenious  invention  in  almost  any  practical  department 
of  human  skill,  and  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  very 
humility  and  conscientiousness  which  would  have  perfected  the 
painter,  have  in  many  instances  prevented  his  becoming  one, 
and  that  in  the  quiet  life  of  our  steady  craftsmen — sagacious  manu- 
facturers, and  uncomplaining  clerks — there  may  frequently  be  con- 
cealed more  genius  than  ever  is  rai.^ed  to  the  direction  of  our  pub 
lie  works,  or  to  be  the  mark  of  our  public  praises. 


ADDENDA.  107 

It  is  indeed  probable,  that  intense  disposition  for  art  will  con 
quf  rthe  most  formidable  obstacles,  if  the  surrounding  circumstanctis 
arc  such  as  at  all  to  present  the  idea  of  such  conquest  to  the  mind ; 
but  we  have  no  ground  for  concluding  that  Giotto  would  ever  hav<> 
beer  more  than  a  shepherd,  if  Cimabue  had  not  by  chance  found 
him  drawing;  or  that  among  the  shepherds  of  the  Apennines,  there 
were  no  other  Giottos,  undiscovered  by  Cimabue.  We  are  too 
much  in  the  habit  of  considering  happy  accidents  as  what  are 
called  "  special  Providences ;"  and  thinking  that  when  any  great 
work  needs  to  be  done,  the  man  who  is  to  do  it  will  certainly  be 
pointed  out  by  Providence,  be  be  shepherd  or  sea-boy  ;  and  pre- 
pared for  his  work  by  all  kinds  of  minor  providences,  in  the  best 
possible  way.  Whereas  all  the  analogies  of  God's  operations  in 
other  matters  prove  the  contrary  of  this;  we  find  that  "of 
thousand  seeds,  He  often  brings  but  one  to  bear,"  often  not  one ; 
and  the  one  seed  which  He  appoints  to  bear  is  allowed  to  beai" 
crude  or  perfect  fruit  according  to  the  dealings  of  the  husbandman 
with  it.  And  there  cannot  be  a  doubt  in"  the  mind  of  any  person 
accustomed  to  take  broad  and  logical  views  of  the  world's  history, 
that  its  events  are  ruled  by  Providence  in  precisely  the  same  man- 
ner as  its  harvests ;  that  the  seeds  of  good  and  evil  are  broadcast 
among  men,  just  as  the  seeds  of  thistles  and  fruits  are ;  and  that 
according  to  the  force  of  our  industry,  and  wisdom  of  our  hus- 
bandry, the  ground  will  bring  forth  to  us  figs  or  thistles.  So  that 
when  it  seems  needed  that  a  certain  work  should  be  done  for  the 
world,  and  no  man  is  there  to  do  it,  we  have  no  right  to  say  that 
God  did  not  wish  it  to  be  done ;  and  therefore  sent  no  man  able 
to  do  it.  The  probability  (if  I  wrote  my  own  convictions,  1 
should  say  certainty)  is,  that  He  sent  many  men,  hundreds  of  men, 
able  to  do  it;  and  that  we  have  rejected  them,  or  crushed  them  ; 
by  our  previous  folly  of  conduct  or  of  institution,  we  have  rendered 
it  impossible  to  distinguish,  or  impossible  to  reach  them;  and 
when  the  need  for  them  comes,  and  we  suffer  for  the  want  of 
them,  it  is  not  that  God  refuses  to  send  us  deliverers,  and  specially 
appomts  all  our  consequent  sufferings;  but  that  He  has  sent,  and 
we  have  refused,  the  deliverers;  and  the  pain  is  then  wrought  out 
by  His  eternal  law,  as  surely  as  famine  is  wrought  out  by  eternal 


108  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF   ART. 

law  for  a  nation  whicli  will  neither  pl(  ugh  nor  «cw.  No  loss  an. 
we  in  crior  in  supposing,  as  we  so  freq'iently  do,  that  if  a  man  be 
found,  he  is  sure  to  be  in  all  respects  fitted  for  the  work  to  be 
done,  as  the  key  is  to  the  lock  :  and  that  every  accident  which 
happened  in  the  forging  him,  only  adapted  him-  more  truly  to  the 
wards.  It  is  pitiful  to  hear  historians  beguiling  themselves  and 
their  readers,  by  tracing  in  the  early  history  of  great  men,  the 
minor  circumstances  which  fitted  them  for  the  work  thoy  did, 
without  ever  taking  notice  of  the  other  circumstances  which  as 
assuredly  unfitted  them  for  it ;  so  concluding  that  miraculous  in- 
terposition prepared  them  in  all  points  for  everything,  and  that 
they  did  all  that  could  have  been  desired  or  hoped  for  from  them  : 
whereas  the  certainty  of  the  matter  is  that,  throughout  their  lives, 
they  were  thwarted  and  corrupted  by  some  things  as  certainly  as 
they  were  helped  and  disciplined  by  others;  and  that,  in  the 
kindliest  and  most  reverent  view  which  can  justly  be  taken  of 
them,  they  were  but  poor  mistaken  creatures,  struggling  with  a 
world  more  profoundly  mistaken  than  they ; — assuredly  sinned 
against,  or  sinning  in  thousands  of  ways,  and  bringing  out  at  last 
a  maimed  result — not  what  they  might  or  ought  to  have  done, 
but  all  that  could  be  done  against  the  world's  resistance,  and  in 
spite  of  their  own  sorrowful  falsehood  to  themselves. 

And  this  being  so,  it  is  the  practical  duty  of  a  wise  nation,  first 
to  withdraw,  as  far  as  may  be,  its  youth  from  destructive  influ- 
ences;— then  to  try  its  material  as  far  as  possible,  and  to  lose  the 
use  of  none  that  is  good.  I  do  not  mean  by  "  withdrawing  from 
destructive  influences "  the  keeping  of  youths  out  of  trials ;  but 
the  keeping  them  out  of  the  way  of  things  purely  and  absolutely 
mischievous.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  should  shade  our  green  corn 
ii:  all  heat,  and  shelter  it  in  all  frost,  but  only  that  we  should 
dyke  out  the  inundation  from  it,  and  drive  the  fowls  away  from 
it  Let  your  youth  labour  and  sufi'er ;  but  do  not  let  it  starve, 
nor  steal,  nor  blaspheme. 

It  is  not,  of  course,  in  my  powerhereto  enter  into  details  of  schemes 
of  education  ;  and  it  will  be  long  before  the  results  of  experiments 
now  in  progress  will  give  data  for  the  solution  of  the  most  difficull 
questions  connected  with  the  subject,  of  which  the  principal  one  1» 


ADDENDA.  109 

the  niofle  in  wliicli  the  chance  of  advancement  in  life  is  to  be  ex- 
tended to  all,  and  yet  made  compatible  with  contentment  in  the 
pursuit  of  lower  avocations  by  those*  whose  abilities  do  not  qualify 
them  for  the  higher.  But  the  general  principle  of  trial  schools 
lies  at  the  root  of  the  matter — of  schools,  that  is  to  say,  in  which 
the  knowledge  offered  and  discipline  enforced  shall  be  all  a  part 
of  a  great  assay  of  the  hmnan  soul,  and  in  which  the  one  shall  be 
increased,  the  other  directed,  as  the  tried  heart  and  brain  will  besi 
l>aar,  and  no  otherwise.  One  thing,  however,  I  must  say,  that  in 
tnis  trial  I  believe  all  emulation  to  be  a  false  motive,  and  all  giv- 
ing of  prizes  a  false  means.  All  that  you  can  depend  upon  in  a 
boy,  as  significative  of  true  power,  likely  to  issue  in  good  fruit,  is 
his  will  to  work  for  the  work's  sake,  not  his  desire  to  surpass  his 
school-fellows  ;  and  the  aim  of  the  teaching  you  give  him  ought  to 
be,  to  prove  to  him  and  strengthen  in  him  his  OAvn  separate  gift, 
not  to  puff  him  into  swollen  rivalry  with  those  who  are  everlast- 
ingly greater  than  he :  still  less  ought  you  to  hang  favours  and 
ribands  about  tlie  neck  of  the  creature  who  is  the  greatest,  to  make 
the  rest  envy  him.  Try  to  make  them  love  him  and  follow  him, 
not  struggle  with  him.    . 

There  must,  of  course,  be  examination  to  ascertain  and  attest 
both  progress  and  relative  capacity ;  but  our  aim  should  be  to  make 
the  students  rather  look  upon  it  as  a  means  of  ascertaining  their 
own  true  positions  and  powers  in  the  world,  than  as  an  arena  in 
which  to  carry  away  a  present  victory.  I  have  not,  perhaps,  in 
the  course  of  the  lecture,  insisted  enough  on  the  nature  of  relative 
capacity  and  individual  character,  as  the  roots  of  all  real  value  in 
Art.  We  are  too  much  in  the  habit,  in  these  days,  of  acting  as  \\ 
Art  worth  a  price  in  the  market  were  a  commodity  which  people 
could  be  generally  taught  to  produce,  and  as  if  the  education  of  the 
artist,  not  his  capacity^  gave  the  sterling  value  to  his  work.  No 
unpression  can  possibly  be  more  absurd  or  false.  Whatever  peo- 
ple can  teach  each  other  to  do,  they  will  estimate,  and  ought  to 
estimate,  only  as  common  industry ;  nothing  will  ever  fetch  a  high 
price  but  precisely  that  which  cannot  be  taught,  and  which  nobody 
can  do  but  the  man  from  whom  ft  is  purchased.  No  state  of 
society,  nor  stage  of  knowledge,  ever  does  away  with  the  natura' 


110  POLITICAL   ECONOMY    OF   ART. 

pre-eminence  of  one  man  over  another;  and  it  is  that  pre-emV 
nonce,  and  that  only,  which  will  give  work  high  value  in  the  mar- 
ket,  or  which  ought  to  do  so. .  It  is  a  bad  sign  of  the  judgment, 
and  bad  omen  for  the  progress,  of  a  nation,  if  it  s  apposes  itself  to 
possess  many  artists  of  equal  merit.  Noble  art  is  nothing  less  than 
the  expression  of  a  great  soul ;  and  great  souls  are  not  common 
things.  If  ever  we  confound  their  work  with  that  of  others,  it  i« 
not  through  liberality,  but  through  blindness. 


Note  4:th,  p.  26. — ^^  Public  favour.^ 

There  is  great  diflBculty  in  making  any  short  or  general  state- 
ment of  the  difference  between  great  and  ignoble  minds  in  their 
behaviour  to  the  "  public."  It  is  by  no  means  universally  the  case 
that  a  mean  mind,  as  stated  in  the  text,  will  bend  itself  to  what 
you  ask  of  it :  on  the  contrary,  there  is  one  kind  of  mind,  the 
meanest  of  all,  which  perpetually  complains  of  the  public,  contem- 
plates-and  proclaims  itself  as  a  "  genius,"  refuses  all  wholesome  dis- 
cipline or  humble  office,  and  ends -in  miserable  and  revengeful  ruin ; 
also,  the  greatest  minds  are  marked  by  nothing  more  distinctly 
than  an  inconceivable  humility,  and  acceptance  of  work  or  instruc- 
tion in  any  form,  and  from  any  quarter.  They  will  learn  from 
everybody,  and  do  anything  that  anybody  asks  of  them,  so  long  as 
it  involves  only  toil,  or  what  other  men  would  think  degradation. 
But  the  point  of  quarrel,  nevertheless,  assuredly  rises  some  day 
between  the  public  and  them,  respecting  some  matter,  not  of  hu- 
miliation, but  of  Fact.  Your  great  man  always  at  last  comes  to 
see  something  the  public  don't  see.  This  something  he  will 
assuredly  persist  in  asserting,  whether  with  tongue  or  pencil,  to  be 
as  he  sees  it,  not  as  they  see  it ;  and  all  the  world  in  a  heap  on  the 
other  side,  will  not  get  him  to  say  otherwise.  Then,  if  the  world 
objects  to  the  saying,  he  may  happen  to  get  stoned  or  burnt  for  it, 
but  that  does  not  in  the  least  matter  to  him  :  if  the  world  has  no 
particular  objection  to  the  saying,  he  may  get  leave  to  mutter  it  to 
him? ell"  till  he  dies,  and  be  merely  taken  for  an  idiot ;  that  also 
does  not  matter  to  him — mutter  it  he  will,  according  to  what  h« 


ADDENDA.  Ill 

percoives  to  be  fact,  and  not  at  all  accorJing  to  the  roaring  of  the 
walls  of  Red  sea  on  the  right  hand  or  left  of  him.  Hence  tho 
quarrel,  sure  at  some  time  or  other,  to  be  started  between  the  pub- 
lic and  him  ;  while  your  mean  man,  though  he  w'll  spit  and  scratch 
spiritedly  at  the  public,  while  it  does  not  attend  lo  ii^iin,  will  bow 
to  it  for  its  clap  in  any  direction,  and  say  anything  when  ne  has 
got  its  ear,  which  he  thinks  will  bring  him  another  clap  ;  and  thus, 
as  stated  in  the  text,  he  and  it  go  on  smoothly  together. 

There  are,  however,  times  when  the  obstinacy  of  the  mean  man 
looks  very  like  the  obstinacy  of  the  great  one ;  but  if  you  look 
closely  into  the  matter,  you  will  always  see  that  the  obstinacy  of 
the  first  is  in  the  pronunciation  of  "  I ;"  and  of  the  second,  in  the 
pronunciation  of  "  It." 


Note  5th,  p.  41. — "  Invention  of  new  wants.^ 

It  would  have  been  impossible  for  political  economists  long  to 
have  endufed  the  error  spoken  of  in  the  text,*  had  they  not  been 

*  I  have  given  the  political  economists  too  much  credit  in  saying  thi» 
Actually,  while  these  sheets  are  passing  through  the  press,  the  blunt,  broad, 
onmitigated  fallacy  is  enunciated,  formally  and  precisely,  by  the  common 
councilmen  of  New  York,  in  their  report  on  the  present  commercial  crisis 
Here  is  their  collective  opinion,  published  in  the  Times  of  November  23rd, 
1857 : — "Another  erroneous  idea  is  that  luxurious  living,  extravagant  dress- 
ing, splendid  turn-outs  aud  fine  houses,  are  the  cause  of  distress  to  a  nation. 
No  more  erroneous  impression  could  exist.  Every  extravagance  that  the 
man  of  100,000  or  1,000,000  dollars  indulges  in  adds  to  the  means,  the  sup- 
port, the  wealth  of  ten  or  a  hundred  who  had  little  or  nothing  else  but  their 
.abour,  their  intellect,  or  their  taste.  If  a  man  of  1,000,000  dollars  spends 
principal  and  interest  in  ten  years,  and  finds  himself  beggared  at  the  end  of 
that  time,  he  has  actually  made  a  hundred  who  have  catered  to  hia  extrava- 
gance, employers  or  employed,  so  much  richer  by  the  division  of  his  wealth. 
He  may  be  ruined,  but  the  nation  is  better  ofif  and  richer,  for  one  hundred 
minds  and  hands,  with  10,000  dollars  apiece,  are  far  more  productive  than 
jne  with  the  whole." 

Yea,  gentlemen  of  the  common  council ;  but  what  has  been  doing  in  th« 
lime  of  the  transfer  ?  The  spending  of  the  fortune  has  taken  a  certain  num 
ber  of  years  (suppose  ten),  and  during  that  time  1,000,000  dollars  worth  ol 


112  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 

confused  by  an  idea,  in  part  well  founded,  that  the  energies  and  re 
fineinents,  as  well  as  the  riches  of  civilized  life,  arose  from  imagin- 
ary wants.  It  is  quite  true,  that  the  savage  who  knows  no  need* 
but  those  of  food,  shelter,  and  sleep,  and  after  he  has  snared  his 
venison  and  patched  the  rents  of  his  hut,  passes  the  rest  of  hie 
time  in  animal  repose,  is  in  a  lower  state  than  the  man  who  laboura 
incessantly  that  he  may  procure  for  himself  the  luxuries  of  civiliza- 
tion ;  and  true  aLo,  that  the  difference  between  one  and  another 
nation  jn  progressive  power  depends  in  great  part  on  vain  desires ; 
but  these  idle  motives  are  merely  to  be  considered  as  giving  exer- 
cise to  the  national  body  and  mind  ;  they  are  not  sources  of  wealth, 
except  so  far  as  they  give  the  habits  of  industry  and  acquisitiveness. 
If  a  boy  is  clumsy  and  lazy,  we  shall  do  good  if  we  can  persuade 
him  to  carve  cherry-stones  and  fly  kites ;  and  this  use  of  his  fingers 
and  limbs  may  eventually  be  the  cause  of  his  becoming  a  wealthy 
and  happy  man  ;  but  we  must  not  therefore  argue  that  cherry-stones 
are  valuable  property,  or  that  kite-flying  is  a  profitable  mode  of  pass- 
ing time.  In  like  manner,  a  nation  always  wastes  its  time  and 
labour  directly,  when  it  invents  a  new  want  of  a  frivolous  kind, 
and  yet  the  invention  of  such  a  want  may  be  the  sign  of  a  healthy 
activity,  and  the  labour  undergone  to  satisfy  the  new  want  may 
lead,  indirectly,  to  useful  discoveries  or  to  noble  arts ;  so  that  a 
nation  is  not  to  be  discouraged  in  its  fancies  when  it  is  either  too 

work  has  been  done  by  the  people,  who  have  been  paid  that  sum  for  it. 
Where  is  the  product  of  that  work?  B7  your  own  statement,  wholly  con- 
sumed ;  for  the  man  for  whom  it  has  been  done  is  now  a  beggar.  You  have 
given  therefore,  as  a  nation,  1,000,000  dollars  worth  of  work,  and  tea  y«ara 
of  time,  and  you  have  produced,  as  ultimate  result,  one  beggar !  Exceileri 
economy,  gentlemen ;  and  sure  to  conduce,  in  due  sequence,  to  the  produc- 
tion of  more  than  one  beggar.  Perha^js  the  matter  may  be  mad*"  clearer  to 
you,  however,  by  a  more  famUiar  instance.  If  a  schoolboy  goes  ""at  in  the 
morning  with  five  shUlings  in  his  pocket,  and  comes  home  at  nignt  penniless, 
laving  spent  his  all  in  tarts,  principal  and  interest  are  gone,  and  fruiterer 
ftLd  baker  are  enriched-  So  far  so  good.  But  suppose  the  schoolboy,  instead, 
hati  bought  a  book  and  a  knife ;  principal  and  interest  are  gone,  and  book- 
seller and  cutler  are  enriched.  But  the  schoolboy  is  enriched  also,  and  may 
help  his  schoolfellows  next  day  with  knife  and  book,  instead  of  lying  in  bed 
and  incurring  a  debt  to  the  doctor. 


ADDENDA.  113 

weak  or  foolish  to  be  moved  to  exertion  by  anything  bnt  fancies, 
or  has  attended  to  its  serious  business  first.  If  a  nation  will  not 
forge  iron,  but  likes  distilling  lavender,  by  all  means  give  it  laven- 
der to  distil ;  only  do  not  let  its  economists  suppose  that  lavender 
is  aj  profitable  to  it  as  oats,  or  that  it  helps  poor  people  to  live, 
any  more  than  the  schoolboy's  kite  provides  him  his  dinner. 
Luxuries,  whether  national  or  personal,  must  be  paid  for  by  labour 
withdrawn  from  useful  things ;  and  no  nation  has  a  right  to 
indulge  in  them  until  all  its  poor  are  comfortably  housed  and  fed. 
The. enervating  influence  of  luxury,  and  its  tendencies  to  increase 
vice,  are  points  which  I  keep  entirely  out  of  consideration  in  the 
present  essay  :  but,  so  far  as  they  bear  on  any  question  discussed, 
they  merely  furnish  additional  evidence  on  the  side  which  I  have 
taken.  Thus,  in  the  present  case,  I  assume  that  the  luxuries  of 
civilized  life  are  in  possession  harmless,  and  in  acquirement,  ser- 
viceable as  a  motive  for  exertion  ;  and  even  on  these  favourable 
terms,  we  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  the  nation  ought  not  to 
indulge  in  them  except  under  severe  limitations.  Much  less  ought 
it  to  indulge  in  them  if  the  temptation  consequent  on  their  posses 
sion,  or  fatality  incident  to  their  manufacture,  more  than  counter- 
balances the  good  done  by  the  effort  to  obtain  them. 


Note  6th,  p.  52. — "  Economy  of  Idteratv/reJ'^ 

I  have  been  much  impressed  lately  by  one  of  the  results  of  the 
quantity  of  our  books ;  namely,  the  stern  impossibility  of  getting 
anything  understood,  that  required  patience  to  understand.  I 
observe  always,  in  the  case  of  my  own  writings,  that  if  ever  I 
Btate  anything  which  has  cost  me  any  trouble  to  ascertain,  and 
which,  therefore,  will  probably  require  a  minute  or  two  of  reflec- 
tioTi  from  the  reader  before  it  can  be  accepted, — that  statement 
will  not  only  be  misunderstood,  but  in  all  probability  taken  to 
mean  something  very  nearly  the  reverse  of  what  it  does  mean. 
Now,  whatever  faults  there  may  be  in  my  modes  of  expression,  ] 
know  that  the  words  I  use  will  always  bo  found,  by  Johnson's  die 


114  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    AKT. 

tioTiary,  to  bear,  first  of  all,  the  sense  I  use  them  in ;  an  I  that  the 
sentc;nces,  whether  awkwardly  turned  or  not,  will,  by  the  ordinary 
rules  of  grammar,  bear  no  other  interpretation  than  that  I  mean 
them  to  bear  ;  so  that  the  misunderstanding  of  them  must  result, 
ultimately,  from  the  mere  fact  that  their  matter  sometimes  requires 
a  little  patience.  And  I  see  the  same  kind  of  misinterpretatioi 
put  on  the  words  of  other  writers,  whenever  they  require  the  same 
kind  of  thought. 

I  was  at  first  a  little  despondent  about  this ;  but,  on  the  whole, 
I  believe  it  will  have  a  good  efiect  upon  our  literature  for  some 
time  to  come ;  and  then,  perhaps,  the  public  may  recover  its 
patience  again.  For  certainly  it  is  excellent  discipline  for  an 
author  to  feel  that  he  must  say  all  he  has  to  say  in  the  fewest  pos- 
sible words,  or  his  reader  is  sure  to  skip  them  ;  and  in  the  plainest 
possible  words,  or  his  reader  will  certainly  misunderstand  them. 
Generally,  also,  a  downright  fact  may  be  told  in  a  plain  way ;  and 
we  want  downright  facts  at  present  more  than  anything  else.  And 
though  I  often  hear  moral  people  complaining  of  the  bad  eff'ects 
of  want  of  thought,  for  my  part,  it  seems  to  me  that  one  of  the 
worst  diseases  to  which  the  human  creature  is  liable  is  its  disease 
of  thinking.  If  it  would  only  just  look*  at  a  thing  instead  of 
thinking  what  it  must  be  like,  or  do  a  thing,  instead  of  thinking  it 
cannot  be  done,  we  should  all  get  on  far  better. 

*  There  can  be  no  question,  however,  of  the  mischievous  tendency  of  the 
hurry  of  the  present  day,  in  the  way  people  undertake  this  very  looking.  I 
gave  three  years'  close  and  incessant  labour  to  the  examination  of  the  chro- 
nolojiv  of  the  architecture  of  Venice ;  two  long  winters  being  wholly  spent 
in  tlif  drawing  of  details  on  the  spot :  and  yet  I  see  constantly  that  architects 
who  pass  three  or  four  days  in  a  gondola  going  up  and  down  the  grand  canal, 
think  that  their  first  impressions  are  just  as  likely  to  be  true  as  my  patiently 
wrought  conclusions.  Mr.  Street,  for  instance,  glances  hastily  at  the  facade 
of  the  Ducal  Palace — so  hastily  that  he  does  not  even  see  what  its  pattern 
is,  and  misses  the  alternation  of  red  and  black  in  the  centres  of  its  squares — 
and  yet  he  instantly  ventures  on  an  opinion  on  the  chronology  of  its  capitals, 
which  is  one  of  the  most  complicated  and  difficult  subjects  in  the  whole  range 
of  Gothic  archaeology.  It  may,  nevertheless,  be  ascertained  with  very  fail 
probability  of  correctness  by  any  person  who  will  give  a  momh'a  banl  work 
to  it,  but  it  can  be  ascertained  no  otherwise. 


ADDENDA.  116 


Note  7th,  p.  93.—"  Pilots  of  the  StaU."^ 

"While,  however,  undoubtedly,  these  responsibilities  attach  to 
0<ery  person  possessed  of  wealth,  it  is  necessary  both  to  avoid  any 
stringency  of  statement  respecting  the  benevolent  modes  of  spend- 
ing money,  and  to  admit  and  approve  so  much  liberty  of  spend- 
ing it  for  selfish  pleasures  as  may  distinctly  make  wealth  a  personal 
reward  for  toil,  and  secure  in  the  minds  of  all  men  the  right  ol 
property.  For  although,  without  doubt,  the  purest  pleasures  it 
can  procure  are  not  selfish,  it  is  only  as  a  means  of  personal  grati- 
fication that  it  will  be  desired  by  a  large  majority  of  workers;  and 
it  would  be  no  less  false  ethics  than  false  policy  to  check  their 
energy  by  any  forms  of  public  opinion  which  bore  hardly  against 
the  wanton'  expenditure  of  honestly  got  wealth.  It  would  be  hard 
if  a  man  who  had  passed  the  greater  part  of  his  life  at  the  desk 
or  counter  could  not  at  last  innocently  gratify  a  caprice ;  and  all 
the  best  and  most  sacred  ends  of  almsgiving  would  be  at  once  dis- 
appointed, if  the  idea  of  a  moral  claim  took  the  place  of  affection- 
ate gratitude  in  the  mind  of  the  receiver. 

Some  distinction  is  made  by  us  naturally  in  this  respect  between 
earned  and  inherited  wealth  ;  that  which  is  inherited  appearing  to 
involve  the  most  definite  responsibilities,  especially  when  consisting 
in  revenues  derived  from  the  soil.  The  form  of  taxation  which 
constitutes  rental  of  lands  places  annually  a  certain  portion  of  the 
national  wealth  in  the  hands  of  the  nobles,  or  other  proprietors  of 
the  soil,  under  conditions  peculiarly  calculated  to  induce  them  to 
give  their  best  care  to  its  eflScient  administration.  The  want 
of  instruction  in  even  the  simplest  principles  of  commerce  and 
economy,  which  hitherto  has  disgraced  our  schools  and  universi- 
ties, has  indeed  been  the  cause  of  ruin  or  total  inutility  of  life  to 
multitudes  of  our  men  of  estate ;  but  this  deficiency  in  our  public 
education  cannot  exist  much  longer,  and  it  appears  to  be  highiv 
adfantageous  for  the  State  that  a  certain  number  of  persons  dis- 
tinguished by  race  should  be  permitted  to  set  examples  of  wise 
expenditure,  whether  in  the  advancement  of  science,  or  in  patron- 
age of  art  and  literature ;  only  they  must  see  to  it  that  they  take 


116  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 

their  right  standing  more  firmly  than  they  have  done  hitherto 
for  the  position  of  a  rich  man  in  relation  to  those  around  him 
is,  in  our  present  real  life,  and  is  also  contemplatec.  generally  by 
political  economists  as  being,  precisely  the  reverse  of  what  it 
onght  to  be.  A  rich  man  ought  to  be  continually  examining  how 
he  may  spend  his  money  for  the  advantage  of  others ;  at  present 
others  are  continually  plotting  how  they  may  beguile  him  intc 
spending  it  apparently  for  his  own.  The  aspect  which  he  presents 
to  the  eyes  of  the  world  is  generally  that  of  a  person  holding  a 
bag  of  money  with  a  staunch  grasp,  and  resolved  to  part  with 
none  of  it  unless  he  is  forced,  and  all  the  people  about  him  are 
plotting  how  they  may  force  him  ;  that  is  to  say,  how  they  may 
persuade  him  that  he  wants  this  thing  or  that ;  or  how  they  may 
produce  things  that  he  will  covet  and  buy.  One  man  tries  to  pvjr 
suade  him  that  he  wants  perfumes ;  another  that  he  wants  jev.el- 
lery;  another  that  he  wants  sugarplums;  another  that  he  wi.al« 
roses  at  Christmas.  Anybody  who  can  invent  a  new  want  for  Lim 
is  supposed  to  be  a  benefactor  to  society ;  and  thus  the  energies 
of  the  poorer  people  about  him  are  continually  directed  to  vJio 
production  of  covetable,  instead  of  serviceable  things;  and  the  nch 
man  has  the  general  aspect  of  a  fool,  plotted  against  by  all  tac 
world.  Whereas  the  real  aspect  which  he  ought  to  have  is  that 
of  a  person  wiser  than  others,  entrusted  with  the  management  jf 
a  larger  quantity  of  capital,  which  he  administers  for  the  profit  of 
all,  directing  each  man  to  the  labour  which  is  most  healthy  icr 
him,  and  most  serviceable  for  the  community. 


Note  8th,  p.  93.—"  Sill  and  Purple:' 

In  various  places  throughout  these  lectures  I  have  had  to  allu<i«< 
to  the  distinction  between  productive  and  unproductive  labour, 
and  between  true  and  false  wealth.  I  shall  here  eudeavcAr,  as 
clearly  as  I  can,  to  explain  the  distinction  I  mean  ** 

Property  may  be  divided  generally  'nto  two  kinds ;  that  which 
produces  life,  and  that  which  produces  the  objects  of  life.  That 
which  produces  or  maintains  life  consists  of  food,  in  so  5ar  as  it  ii 


ADDENDA.  IIT 

aourishing;  of  furniture  and  clothing,  in  so  far  as  they  are  pro 
tective  or  cherishing ;  of  fuel ;  and  of  all  land,  instruments,  or 
materials,  necessary  to  produce  food,  houses,  clothes,  and  fuel.  It 
IS  specially  and  rightly  called  useful  property. 

The  property  which  produces  the  objects  of  life  consists  of  all 
that  gives  pleasure  or  suggests  and  preserves  thought :  of  food, 
furniture,  and  land,  in  so  far  as  they  are  pleasing  to  the  appetite  or 
the  eye ;  of  luxurious  dress,  and  all  other  kinds  of  luxuries ;  of 
books,  pictures,  and  architecture.  But  the  modes  of  connection 
of  certain  minor  forms  of  property  with  human  labour  render  it 
desirable  to  arrange  them  under  more  than  these  two  heads. 
Property  may  therefore  be  conveniently  considered  as  of  five 
kinds. 

1st.  Property  necessary  to  life,  but  not  producible  by  labour, 
and  therefore  belonging  of  right,  in  a  due  measure,  to  every 
human  being  as  soon  as  he  is  born,  and  morally  inalienable.  Aa 
for  instance,  his  proper  share  of  the  atmosphere,  without  which  he 
cannot  breathe,  and  of  water,  which  he  needs  to  quench  his  thirst. 
As  much  land  as  he  needs  to  feed  from  is  also  inalienable;  but  in 
well  regulated  communities  this  quantity  of  land  may  often  bo 
represented  by  other  possessions,  or  its  need  supplied  by  wagea 
and  privileges. 

2.  Property  necessary  to  life,  but  only  produqible  by  labour, 
and  of  which  the  possession  is  morally  connected  with  labour,  so 
that  no  person  capable  of  doing  the  work  necessary  for  its  pro- 
duction has  a  right  to  it  until  he  has  done  that  work ; — "  he  that 
will  not  work,  neither  should  he  eat."  It  consists  of  simple  food, 
clothing,  and  habitation,  with  their  seeds  and  materials,  or  instru- 
ments and  machinery,  and  animals  used  for  necessary  draught  or 
locomotion,  &c.  It  is  to  be  observed  of  this  kind  of  property, 
that  its  increase  cannot  usually  be  carried  beyond  a  certain  point, 
because  it  depends  not  on  labour  only,  but  on  things  of  which  the 
pupply  is  limited  by  nature.  The  possible  accumulation  of  corn 
dependc  on  the  quantity  of  corn-growing  land  possessed  or  com- 
mercially accessible  ;  and  that  of  steel,  similarly,  on  the  accessible 
quantity  of  coal  and  ironstone.  It  follows  from  this  natural 
limitation  of  supply  that  the  accumulation  of  property  of  this  kini 


118  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 

in  laige  masses  at  one  point,  or  in  one  person's  banos,  coiunicnlj 
involves,  more  or  less,  the  scarcity  of  it  at  another  point  and  ir 
other  persons'  hands;  so  that  the  accidents  or  energip.«  which  may 
enable  one  man  to  procure  a  great  deal  of  it,  may,  and  in  all  like- 
lihood will  partially  prevent  other  men  procuring  a  sufficiency  of 
it,  however  willing  they  may  be  to  work  for  it ;  therefore,  the 
modes  of  its  accumulation  and  distribution  need  to  be  in  some 
degree  regulated  by  law  and  by  national  treaties,  in  order  to 
secure  justice  to  all  men. 

Another  point  requiring  notice  respecting  this  sort  of  property 
is,  that  no  work  can  be  wasted  in  producing  it,  provided  only  the 
kind  of  it  produced  be  preservable  and  distributable,  since  foi 
every  grain  of  such  commodities  we  produce  we  are  rendering  so 
much  more  life  possible  on  earth.*  But  though  we  are  sure,  thus, 
that  we  are  employing  people  well,  we  cannot  be  sure  we  might 
not  have  employed  them  better  ;  for  it  is  possible  to  direct  labour 
to  the  production  of  life,  until  little  or  none  is  left  for  that  of  the 
objects  of  life,  and  thus  to  increase  population  at  the  expense  of 

*  This  point  has  sometimes  been  disputed;  for  instance,  opening  Mill's 
.  Political  Economy  the  other  day,  I  chanced  on  a  passage  in  which  he  says 
that  a  man  who  makes  a  coat,  if  the  person  who  wears  the  coat  does  nothing 
useful  while  he  wears  it,  has  done  no  more  good  to  society  than  the  man 
who  has  only  raised  a  pine-apple.  But  this  is  a  fallacy  induced  by  endeavour 
after  too  much  subtlety.  None  of  us  have  a  right  to  say  that  the  life  of  a 
man  is  of  no  use  to  Mm,  though  it  may  be  of  no  use  to  ils  ;  and  the  man 
who  made  the  coat,  and  thereby  prolonged  another  man's  life,  has  done  a 
gracious  and  useful  work,  whatever  may  come  of  the  hie  so  prolonged.  We 
may  say  to  the  wearer  of  the  coat,  "  You  who  are  wearing  coats,  and  doing 
noticing  in  them,  are  at  present  wasting  your  own  hfe  and  other  people's;" 
but  we  have  no  right  to  say  that  his  existence,  however  wasted,  is  wasted 
away.  It  may  be  just  dragging  itself  on,  in  its  thin  golden  hne,  with  nothing 
dependent  upon  it,  to  the  point  where  it  is  to  strengthen  into  good  chain 
cable,  and  have  ihousands  of  other  lives  dependent  on  it.  Meantime,  the 
afjcnple  fact  respecting  the  coat-maker  is,  that  he  has  given  so  much  life  to 
the  creature,  the  results  of  which  he  cannot  calculate ;  they  may  be — in  aL' 
probability  will  be — infinite  results  in  some  way.  But  the  raiser  of  pine^ 
who  has  only  given  a  pleasant  taste  in  the  mouth  to  some  one,  may  see  with 
tolerable  clearness  to  the  end  of  Ae  taste  in  the  mouth,  and  of  aU  conceiv 
able  results  therefrom. 


ADDENDA.  119 

Civilization,  learning,  and  morality:  on  the  ether  hand,  it  ifi  just 
as  possible — and  tlie  error  is  one  to  which  the  world  is,  on  the 
whole,  more  liable — to  direct  labour  to  the  objects-of  life  till  too 
little  is  loft  for  life,  and  thus  to  increase  luxury  or  learning  at  the 
expense  o(  population.  Right  political  economy  holds  its  aim 
poised  juLtly  between  the  two  extremes,  desiring  neither  to  crowd 
its  dominions  with  a  race  of  savages,  nor  to  found  courts  and 
colleges  in  the  midst  of  a  desert. 

3.  The  third  kind  of  property  is  that  which  conduces  to  bodily 
pleasures  and  conveniences,  without  directly  tending  to  sustain 
life ;  perhaps  sometimes  indirectly  tending  to  destroy  it.  All 
dainty  (as  distinguished  from  nourishing)  food,  and  means  of  pro- 
ducing it ;  all  scents  not  needed  for  health  ;  substances  valued 
only  for  their  appearance  and  rarity  (as  gold  and  jewels) ;  flowers 
of  difficult  culture ;  animals  used  for  delight  (as  horses  for  racing), 
and  such  like,  form  property  of  this  class ;  to  which  the  term 
"  luxury,  or  luxuries,"  ought  exclusively  to  belong. 

Respecting  which  we  have  to  note,  first,  that  all  such  property 
13  of  doubtful  advantage  even  to  its  po  'sessor.  Furniture  tempting 
to  indolence,  sweet  odours,  and  luscious  food,  are  more  or  less  in- 
jiirious  to  health  :  while,  jewels,  liveries,  and  other  such  common 
belongings  of  wealthy  people,  certainly  convey  no  pleasure  to 
their  owners  proportionate  to  their  cost. 

Farther,  such  property,  for  the  most  part,  perishes  in  the  using. 
Jewels  form  a  great  exception — but  rich  food,  fine  dresses,  horses 
and  carriages,  are  consumed  by  the  owner's  use.  It  ought  much 
oftener  be  brought  to  the  notice  of  rich  men  what  sums  of  interest 
of  money  they  are  paying  towards  the  close  of  their  lives,  for  luxu- 
ries consumed  in  the  middle  of  them.  It  would  be  very  interest 
ing,  for  instance,  to  know  the  exact  sum  which  the  money  spent 
in  London  for  ices,  at  its  desserts  and  balls,  during  the  last  twenty 
years  had  it  been  saved  and  put  out  at  compound  interest,  would 
i  t  this  moment  have  furnished  for  useful  purposes. 

Also,  in  most  cases,  the  enjoyment  of  such  property  is  wholly 
selfish,  and  limited  to  its  possessor.  Splendid  dress  and  equipage, 
however,  when  so  arranged  as  to  produce  real  beauty  of  effiict,  may 
often  be  lather  a  generous  than  a  selfish  channel  of  expenditure 


120  POLITICAL    KCONOMT    OF   ART. 

Thoy  will,  however,  necessarily  in  such  case  involve  scnio  of  the 
arts  of  design ;  and  therefore  take  their  place  in  a  higher  category 
than  that  of  luxuries  merely. 

4.  The  fourth  kind  of  property  is  that  which  bestows  intpUectual 
or  emotional  pleasure,  consisting  of  land  set  apart  for  pn.'poses  o< 
delight  more  than  for  agriculture,  of  books,  works  of  art,  and 
objects  of  natural  history. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  fix  an  accurate  limit  between  pro- 
perty of  the  last  class  and  of  this  class,  since  things  which  are  a 
mere  luxury  to  one  person  are  a  means  of  intellectual  occupation 
to  another.  Flowers  in  a  London  ball-room  are  a  luxury;  in  a 
botanical  garden,  a  delight  of  the  intellect ;  and  in  their  native 
fields,  both;  while  the  most  noble  works  of  art  are  continually 
made  material  of  vulgar  luxury  or  of  criminal  pride ;  but,  when 
rightly  used,  property  of  this  fourth  class  is  the  only  kind  which 
deserves  the  name  of  real  property ;  it  is  the  only  kind  which  a 
man  can  truly  be  said  to  "  possess."  What  a  man  eats,  or  drinks, 
or  wears,  so  long  as  it  is  only  what  is  needful  for  life,  can  no  more 
be  thought  of  as  his  possession  than  the  air  he  breathes.  The  air 
is  as  needful  to  him  as  the  food;  but  we  do  not  talk  of  a  man's 
wealth  of  air,  and  what  food  or  clothing  a  man  possesses  more  than 
he  himself  requires,  must  be  for  others  to  use  (and,  to  him,  there- 
fore, not  a  real  property  in  itself,  but  only  a  means  of  obtaining 
some  real  property  in  exchange  for  it).  Whereas  the  things  thai 
give  intellectual  or  emotional  enjoyment  may  be  accumulated  and 
do  not  perish  in  using ;  but  continually  supply  new  pleasures  and 
new  powers  of  giving  pleasures  to  others.  And  these,  therefore, 
are  the  only  things  which  can  rightly  be  thought  of  as  giving 
"  wealth  "  or  "  well  being."  Food  conduces  only  to  "  being,"  but 
these  to  "  well  being."  And  there  is  not  any  broader  ^^eneral  dis- 
tinction between  lower  and  higher  orders  of  men  than  rests  on 
their  possession  of  this  real  property.  The  human  race  may  be 
pioperly  divided  by  zoologists  into  "  men  who  have  gardens,  libra- 
ries, or  works  of  art ;  and  who  have  none ;"  and  the  former  class 
will  include  all  noble  persons,  except  only  a  few  who  make  the 
world  their  garden  or  museum ;  while  the  people  who  have  not, 
or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  do  not  care  for  gardens  or  librarica, 


ADDENDA.  121 

Imt  care  for  nothing  but  money  or  luxuries,  will  include  none  but 
ignoble  persons  :  only  it  is  necessary  to  understand  that  I  mean  by 
the  term  "  garden  "  as  much  the  Carthusian  s  plot  of  ground  fifteen 
feet"  square  between  his  monastery  buttresses,  as  I  do  the  groundi. 
of  Chatswoi-th  or  Kew ;  and  I  mean  by  the  term  "  art "  as  much 
the  old  sailor's  print  of  the  Arethusa  bearing  up  to  engage  the 
Belle  Poule,  as  I  do  Raphael's  "  Disputa,"  and  even  rather  more ; 
for  when  abundant,  beautiful  possessions  of  this  kind  are  almost 
always  associated  with  vulgar  luxury,  and  become  then  anything 
but  indicative  of  noble  character  in  their  possessors.  The  ideal  of 
human  life  is  a  union  of  Spartan  simplicity  of  manners  with  Athe- 
nian sensibility  and  imagination,  but  in  actual  results,  we  are  con- 
tinually mistaking  ignorance  for  simplicity,  and  sensuality  for 
refinement. 

5.  The  fifth  kind  of  property  is  representative  property,  consist- 
ing of  documents  or  money,  or  rather  documents  only,  for  money 
itself  is  only  a  transferable  document,  current  among  societies  of 
men,  giving  claim,  at  sight,  to  some  definite  benefit  or  advantage, 
most  commonly  to  a  certain  share  of  real  property  existing  in  those 
societies.  The  money  is  only  genuine  when  the  property  it  gives 
claim  to  is  real,  or  the  advantages  it  gives  claim  to  certain  ;  other- 
w  ise,  it  is  false  money,  and  may  be  considered  as  much  "  forged  " 
when  issued  by  a  government,  or  a  bank,  as  when  by  an  individual. 
1  hus,  if  a  dozen  of  men,  cast  ashore  on  a  desert  island,  pick  up  a 
number  of  stones,  put  a  red  spot  on  ea  ;h  stone,  and  pass  a  law 
luat  every  stone  marked  with  a  red  spot  shall  give  claim  to  a  peck 
of  wheat ; — so  long  as  no  wheat  exists,  or  can  exist,  on  the  island, 
the  stones  are  not  money.  But  the  moment  so  much  wheat  exists 
Hs  shall  render  it  possible  for  the  society  always  to  give  a  peck  for 
every  spotted  stone,  the  spotted  stones  would  become  money,  and 
might  be  ex  banged  by  their  possessors  for  whatever  other  com- 
modities they  chose,  to  the  value  of  the  peck  of  wheat  which  the 
stones  represented.  If  more  stones  were  issued  than  the  quantity 
of  wheat  could  answer  the  demand  of,  the  value  of  the  stone 
coinage  would  be  depreciated,  in  proportion  to  its  increase  above 
the  quantity  needed  to  answer  it. 

Again,  supposing  a  certain  number  of  the  men  so  cast  aahoie 

6 


122  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 

were  set  aside  by  lot,  or  any  other  convention,  to  do  the  roiighei 
labour  necessary  for  the  whole  society,  they  themselves  being 
maintained  by  the  daily  allotment  of  a  certain  quantity  of  food, 
clothing,  &c.  Then,  if  i(;  were  agreed  that  the  stones  spotted  wiih 
rod  should  be  signs  of  a  Government  order  for  the  labour  of  tlies« 
men  ;  and  that  any  person  presenting  a  spotted  stone  at  the  offiw 
of  the  labourers,  should  be  entitled  to  a  man's  work  for  a  weel 
or  a  day,  the  red  stones  would  be  money  ;  and  might — probablj 
would, — immediately  pass  current  in  the  island  for  as  much  ho^, 
or  clothing,  or  iron,  or  any  other  article  as  a  man's  work  for  the 
period  secured  by  the  stone  was  worth.  But  if  the  Government 
issued  so  many  spotted  stones  that  it  was  impossible  for  the  body 
of  men  they  employed  to  comply  with  the  orders ;  as,  suppose,  if 
they  only  employed  twelve  men,  and  issued  eighteen  spotted  stones 
daily,  ordering  a  day's  work  each,  then  the  six  extra  stones  would 
be  forged  or  false  money ;  and  the  effect-of  this  forgery  would  be 
the  depreciation  of  the  value  of  the  whole  coinage  by  one-third, 
that  being  the  period  of  shortcoming  which  would,  on  the  average, 
necessarily  ensue  in  the  execution  of  each  order.  Much  occasional 
work  may  be  done  in  a  state  or  society,  by  help  of  an  issue  of  false 
money  (or  false  promises)  by  way  of  stimulants ;  and  the  fruit  of 
this  work,  if  it  comes  into  the  promiser's  hands,  may  sometimes 
enable  the  false  promises  at  last  to  be  fulfilled :  hence  the  frequent 
issue  of  false  money  by  governments  and  banks,  and  theliot  uufre- 
quent  escapes  from  the  natural  and  proper  consequences  of  such 
false  issues,  so  as  to  cause  a  confused  conception  in  most  people's 
minds  of  what  money  really  is.  I  am  not  sure  whether  some 
quantity  of  such  false  issue  may  not  really  be  permissible  in  a 
nation,  accurately  proportioned  to  the  minimum  average  produce 
of  the  labour  it  excites;  but  all  such  procedures  are  more  or  less 
unsound;  and  the  notion  of  unMraited  issue  of  currency  is  simply 
one  of  the  absurdest  and  most  monstrous  that  ever  came  into  dis- 
jointed human  wits. 

The  use  of  objects  of  real  or  supposed  value  for  currency,  as 
go .y,  jewellery,  &c.,  is  barbarous;  and  it  always  expresses  either 
the  measrre  of  the  distrust  in  the  society  of  its  own  government, 
or  the  proportion  of  distrustful  or  barbarous  nations  with  whom  it 


ADDENDA.  12U 

has  to  deal.  A  metal  not  easily  corroded  or  imitated,  is  a  desirable 
medium  of  currency  for  the  sake  of  cleanliness  and  convenience, 
but  were  it  possible  to  prevent  forgery,  the  more  worthless  the 
metal  itself,  the  better.  The  use  of  worthless  media,  unrestrained 
by  the  use  of  valuable  media,  has  always  hitherto  involved,  and  is 
therefore  supposed  to  involve  necessarily,  unlimited,  or  at  least 
improperly  extended,  issue ;  but  we  might  as  well  suppose  that  a 
man  must  necessarily  issue  unlimited  promises  because  his  words 
cost  nothing.  Intercourse  with  foreign  nations  must,  indeed,  for 
ages  yet  to  come,  at  the  world's  present  rate  of  progress,  be  car- 
ried on  by  valuable  currencies;  but  such  transactions  .are  nothing 
more  than  forms  of  barter.  The  gold  used  at  present  as  a  currency 
is  not,  in  point  of  fact,  currency  at  all,  but  the  real  property* 
which  the  currency  gives  claim  to,  stamped  to  measure  its  quaii 
tity,  and  mingling  with  the  real  currency  occasionally  by  bailer. 

The  evils  necessarily  resulting  from  the  use  of  baseless  curren 
cies  have  been  terribly  illustrated  while  these  sheets  have  been 
passing  through  the  press ;  I  have  not  had  time  to  examine  the 
various  conditions  of  dishonest  or  absurd  trading  which  have  led 
to  the  late  "  panic"  in  America  and  England ;  this  only  I  know, 
that  no  merchant  deserving  the  name  ought  to  be  more  liable  to 
"panic"  than  a  soldier  should  ;  for  his  name  should  never  be  on 
more  paper  than  he  can  at  any  instant  meet  the  call  of,  happen 
what  will.  I  do  not  say  this  without  feeling  at  the  same  time 
how  difficult  it  is  to  mark,  in  existing  commerce,  the  just  limits 
between  the  spirit  of  enterprise  and  of  speculation.     Something  of 

*  Or  ratlier,  equivalent  to  such  real  property,  because  everybody  has  been 
accustomed  to  look  upon  it  as  valuable;  and  therefore  everybody  is  willing 
to  give  labour  or  goods  for  it.  But  real  property  does  ultimately  consist  only 
in  things  that  nourish  the  body  or  mind ;  gold  would  be  useless  to  us  if  we 
X)'ald  not  got  mutton  or  books  for  it.  Ultimately  all  commercial  mistakes 
and  embarrassments  result  from  people  expecting  to  get  goods  w  ithout  woi  k- 
ing  for  them,  or  wasting  them  after  they  have  got  them.  A  nation  which 
labouro,  and  takes  care  of  the  fruits  of  labour,  would  be  rich  and  happy ; 
though  there  were  no  gold  in  the  universe.  A  nation  which  is  idle,  and 
wastes  the  produce  of  what  work  it  does,  would  be  poor  and  mLscrable, 
though  all  its  mountains  were  of  gold,  end  bad  glens  tilled  with  diam<»iid 
ia<rtead  of  glacier 


124  POLITICAL    ECONOMY    OF    ART. 

tlie  same  temper  which  makes  the  English  soldier  ilo  always  al 
that  is  possible,  and  attempt  more  than  is  possible,  joins  its  influ- 
ence with  that  of  mere  avarice  in  tempting  the  English  mercliant 
into  risks  which  he  cannot  justify,  and  efforts  which  he  cannot 
Bustaic ;  and  the  same  passion  for  adventure  which  our  travellers 
gratify  every  summer  on  perilous  snow  wreaths,  and  cloud-encom- 
passed precipices,  surrounds  with  a  romantic  fascination  the  glit- 
tering of  a  hollow  investment,  and  gilds  the  clouds  that  curl  round 
gulfs  of  ruin.  Nay,  a  higher  and  a  more  serious  feeling  frequently 
mingles  in  the  motley  temptation  ;  and  men  apply  themselves  to 
the  task  of.  growing  rich,  as  to  a  labour  of  providential  appoint- 
ment, from  which  they  cannot  pause  without  culpability,  nor  retire 
without  dishonour.  Our  large  trading  cities  bear  to  me  very 
nearly  the  aspect  of  monastic  establishments  in  which  the  roar  of 
the  mill-wheel  and  the  crane  takes  the  place  of  other  devotionjil 
music  :  and  in  which  the  worship  of  Mammon  and  Moloch  is  con- 
ducted with  a  tender  reverence  and  an  exact  propriety  :  the  mer- 
chant rising  to  his  Mammon  matins  with  the  self-denial  of  an  ancho- 
rite, and  expiating  the  frivolities  into  which  he  may  be  beguiled  in 
the  course  of  the  day  by  late  attendance  at  Mammon  vespers. 
But,  with  every  allowance  that  can  be  made  for  these  conscien- 
tious and  romantic  persons,  the  fact  remains  the  same,  that  by  far 
the  greater  number  of  the  transactions  which  lead  to  these  times 
of  commercial  embarrassment  may  be  ranged  simply  under  two 
great  heads, — gambling  and  stealing ;  and  both  of  these  in  their 
most  culpable  form,  namely,  gambling  with  money  which  is  not 
ours,  and  stealing  from  those  who  trust  us.  I  have  sometimes 
thought  a  day  might  come,  when  the  nation  would  perceive  that 
a  well-educated  man  who  steals  a  hundred  thousand  pounds,  involv- 
ing the  entire  means  of  subsistence  of  a  hundred  families,  deserves, 
on  the  whole,  as  severe  a  punishment  as  an  ill-educated  man 
who  steals  a  purse  from  a  pocket,  or  a  mug  from  a  pantry.  But 
without  hoping  for  this  success  of  clear-sightedness,  we  may  at 
least  labour  for  a  system  of  greater  honesty  and  kindness  in  the 
minor  commerce  of  our  daily  life ;  since  the  great  dishonesty  of 
the  great  buyers  and  sellers  is  nothing  more  than  the  natural 
growth  and  outcome  from  the  little  dishonesty  of  the  little  buyers 


ADDENDA.  1 25 

«ncl  sellers.  Every  person  who  tries  to  buy  an  article  for  less  tliar 
its  proper  value,  or  who  tries  to  sell  it  at  more  than  its  propei 
value — every  consumer  who  keeps  a  tradesman  waiting  for  his 
money,  and  every  tradesman  who  bribes  a  consumer  to  extrava- 
gance by  credit,  is  helping  forward,  according  to  his  own  measure 
of  power,  a  system  of  baseless  and  dishonourable  commerce,  and 
forcing  his  country  down  into  poverty  and  shame.  And  people 
of  moderate  means  and  average  powers  of  mind  would  do  far  more 
real  good  by  merely  carrying  out  stern  principles  of  justice  and 
honesty  in  common  matters  of  trade,  than  by  the  most  ingenious 
schemes  of  extended  philanthropy,  or  vociferous  declarations  of 
theological  doctrine.  There  are  three  weighty  matters  of  the  law 
— justice,  mercy,  and  truth  ;  and  of  these  the  Teacher  puts  trutii 
last,  because  that  cannot  be  known  but  by  a  course  of  acts  of  jui»- 
tice  and  love.  But  men  put,  in  all  their  eflforts,  truth  first, 
because  they  mean  by  it  their  own  opinions ;  and  thus,  while  the 
world  has  many  people  who  would  suffer  martyrdom  in  the  cause 
of  what  they  call  truth,  it  has  few  who  will  suffer  even  a  little 
incoDvenience  in  that  of  justice  and  mercT 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ADDITIONAL  PAPERS. 


EDUCATION    IN    ART. 


Read  for  the  author  before  the  National  Association  for  the  Promotion 
of  Social  Science  in  the  autumn  of  1858 ;  and  printed  in  the 
Transactions  of  the  Society  for  that  year,  pp.  311-16. 

I  WILL  not  attempt  in  this  paper  to  enter  into  any  general 
consideration  of  the  possible  influence  of  art  on  the  masses  of 
tlie  peopl<\  The  inquiry  is  one  of  great  complexity,  involved 
with  that  into  the  uses  and  dangers  of  hixury  ;  nor  have  we 
as  yet  data  enough  to  justify  us  in  oonjt'cturing  how  far  the 
practice  of  art  may  he  compatible  with  rude  or  mechanical 
em[iloymcnts.  ]?ut  the  question,  however  difficult,  lies  in  the 
same  light  as  tliat  of  the  i  ses  of  reading  or  writing;  for  draw- 
ing, so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  the  multitude,  is  mainly  to  be 
considered  as  n  means  of  obtaining  and  communicating  knowl- 
edge. He  who  can  accurately  represent  the  form  of  an  ob- 
ject, and  match  its  colour,  has  unquestionably  a  power  of 
notation  and  description  greater  in  most  instances  than  that 
of  words;  and  this  science  of  notation  ought  to  be  simply 
regarded  as  that  which  is  conccnuMl  with  the  record  of  form, 
just  as  arithmetic  is  concerned  with  the  record  of  number. 
Of  course  abuses  an<l  dangers  attend  the  acquirement  of  every 
power.      We  have    all   of   ns    probably    known    persons    who, 


126  A    JOY    FOR   EVER. 

without  being  able  to  read  or  write,  cliscliarged  tlic  important 
duties  of  life  wisely  and  fnithfiilly;  as  we  have  also  without 
doubt  known  others  able  to  read  and  write,  whose  reading 
did  little  good  to  themselves,  and  whose  writing  little  good  to 
any  one  else.  But  we  do  not  therefore  duubt  tlie  expediency 
of  acquiring  those  arts;  neither  ought  we  to  doubt  the  ex- 
pediency of  acquiring  the  art  of  drawing,  if  we  admit  that  it 
may  indeed  become  practically  useful. 

Nor  should  we  long  hesitate  in  admitting  this,  if  we  were 
not  in  the  habit  of  considering  instruction  in  the  arts  chiefly 
as  a  means  of  promoting  what  we  call  "taste"  or  dilettantism, 
and  other  habits  of  mind,  which,  in  their  more  modern  devel- 
opments in  Europe,  have  certainly  not  been  advantageous  to 
nations,  or  indicative  of  worthiness  in  them.  Nevertheless, 
true  taste,  or  the  instantaneous  preference  of  the  noble  thing 
to  the  ignoble,  is  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  high  worthi- 
ness in  nations  or  men;  only  it  is  not  to  be  acquii'ed  by  seek- 
ing it  as  our  chief  object,  since  the  first  question,  alike  for 
man  and  for  multitude,  is  not  at  all  what  they  are  to  like,  but 
what  they  are  to  do;  and  fortunately  so,  since  true  taste,  so 
far  as  it  depends  on  original  instinct,  is  not  equally  com- 
municable to  all  men;  and,  so  far  as  it  depends  on  extended 
comparison,  is  unattainable  by  men  employed  in  nariow  fields 
of  life.  We  shall  not  succeed  in  making  a  peasant's  opinion 
good  evidence  on  the  merits  of  the  Elgin  and  Lycian  marbles ; 
nor  is  it  necessary  to  dictate  to  him  in  his  garden  the  prefer- 
ence of  gillyflower  or  of  rose ;  yet  I  believe  we  may  make  art 
a  means  of  giving  him  helpful  and  happy  pleasure,  and  of 
gaining  for  him  serviceable  knowledge. 

Thus,  in  our  simplest  codes  of  school  instruction,  I  hope 
some  day  to  see  local  natural  history  assume  a  principal  place, 
so  that  our  peasant  children  may  be  taught  the  nature  and 
uses  of  the  herbs  that  grow  in  their  meadows,  and  may  take 


EDUCATION    IN    ART.  137 

interest  in  observing  and  cherishing,  ratlier  than  in  hunting 
or  killing,  the  liaiinless  animals  of  their  country.  Supposing 
it  determined  that  this  local  natural  hietoiy  should  be  taught, 
drawiug  ought  to  be  used  to  fix  the  attention,  and  test,  while 
it  aided,  the  memory,  "  Draw  such  and  such  a  flower  in  out- 
line, with  iis  bell  towards  )ou.  Draw  ii  with  its  side  towards 
you.  Taint  the  spots  upon  it.  Draw  a  duck's  head — her 
foot.  Now  a  robin's, —  a  thrush's, — now  tlu;  spots  upon  the 
thrush's  breast."  These  are  the  kind  of  tasks  which  it  seems 
to  me  should  be  set  to  the  young  peasant  student.  Surely 
the  occupation  would  no  more  be  thought  contemptible  which 
was  thus  subservient  to  knowledge  and  to  compassion  ;  and 
peihaps  we  should  find  in  process  of  time  tliat  the  Italian 
connexion  of  art  with  clUctto,  or  delight,  was  both  consistent 
with,  and  even  maiidy  consequent  upon,  a  pure  Greek  con- 
nexion of  art  with  arete,  or  virtue. 

Tt  may  perhaps  be  thought  that  the  power  of  representing 
ill  any  sufficient  manner  natural  objects  sucli  as  those  above 
instanced  would  be  of  too  difficult  attainn)ent  to  be  aimed  at 
in  elementary  instruction.  But  I  have  had  practical  proof 
that  it  is  not  so.  From  workmen  who  had  little  time  to  spare, 
and  that  only  after  they  were  jaded  by  the  day's  lahour,  I  have 
olitaincd,  in  the  course  of  tluee  or  four  months  from  thc-r 
first  taking  a  pencil  in  hand,  perfectly  useful,  and  in  many 
respects  admirable,  drawings  of  natural  ohjicts.  It  is,  how- 
ever, necessary,  in  order  to  secure  this  result,  that  the  stu- 
dent's aim  should  be  absolutely  restricted  to  the  representation 
of  visible  fact.  All  more  vaiied  or  elevated  practice  must  be 
deferred  until  the  powers  of  true  sight  and  just  representation 
arc  acquired  in  simplicity ;  nor,  in  the  case  of  children  be- 
longing to  the  lower  classes,  does  it  seem  to  me  often  advis- 
ablt!  to  aim  at  anything  iiior.'.  At  all  events,  their  drawing 
lessons  should  be  made   as  recreative  as  possible.     Undergoing 


128  A   JOY   FOR   EVER. 

due  discipline  of  hard  labour  in  other  directions,  such  children 
should  be  painlessly  initiated  into  employments  calculated  for 
the  relief  of  toil.  It  is  of  little  consequence  that  they  should 
know  the  principles  of  art,  but  of  much  that  their  attefition 
should  be  pleasurably  excited.  In  our  higher  public  schools, 
on  the  contrary,  drawing-  should  be  taught  rightly;  that  is  to 
say,  with  due  succession  and  security  of  preliminary  steps, — 
it  being  here  of  little  consequence  whether  the  student  attains 
oreat  or  little  skill,  but  of  much  tliat  he  sliould  perceive  dis- 
tinctly whit  degree  of  skill  he  has  attained,  reverence  that 
which  surpasses  it,  and  know  the  principles  of  right  in  what 
he  has  been  able  to  accomplish.  It  is  impossible  to  make 
every  boy  an  artist  or  a  connoisseur,  but  quite  possible  to 
make  him  understand  the  meaning  of  art  in  its  rudiments,  and 
to  make  him  modest  enough  to  forbear  expressing,  in  after  life, 
judgments  which  he  has  not  knowledge  enough  to  render  just. 

There  is,  however,  at  present  this  great,  difficulty  in  the  way 
of  such  systematic  teaching — that  the  public  do  not  b^-lieve 
the  principles  of  art  are  determinable,  and  in  no  wise  matters 
of  opinion.  They  do  not  believe  that  good  drawing  is  good, 
and  bad  drawing  is  bad,  whatever  any  number  of  persons  may 
think  or  declare  to  the  contrary — that  there  is  a  right  or  best 
way  of  laying  colours  to  produce  a  given  effect,  just  as  there 
is  a  right  or  best  way  of  dyeing  ch)th  of  a  given  colour,  and 
that  Titian  and  Veronese  are  not  merely  accidentally  admi- 
rable but  eternally  right. 

The  public,  of  course,  cannot  be  convinced  of  this  unity 
and  stability  of  principle  until  clear  assertion  of  it  is  made  to 
them  by  painters  whom  they  respect ;  and  the  painters  whom 
they  respect  are  generally  too  modest,  and  sometimes  too 
proud  to  make  it.  I  believe  the  chief  reason  for  tlieir  not 
having  yet  declared  at  least  the  fundamental  laws  of  labour  as 
connected  with  art-study   is  a  kind   of  feeling  on  their  part 


EDUCATION    IN    AKT.  139 

that  ^^  cela  va  sans  dire."  Every'great  painier  knows  so  well 
till!  necessity  of  hard  aii'l  systematized  work,  in  order  to  at- 
tain even  ihe  lower  degrees  of  skill,  that  he  natmally  supposes 
if  people  use  no  diligence  in  drawing,  they  do  not  caie  to  ac- 
quire the  power  of  it,  and  that  the  toil  involved  in  wholesome 
study  being  greater  than  the  ma-s  of  people  have  ever  given, 
is  also  greater  than  they  wuuld  ever  be  willing  to  give.  Feel- 
ing also,  as  any  real  painter  feels,  that  his  own  excellence  is 
a  gift,  no  less  than  the  reward  of  toil,  perhaps  slightly  dislik- 
ing to  confess  the  labour  it  has  cost  him  to  perfect  it,  and 
wholly  despairing  of  doing  any  good  by  the  confession,  he 
contemptuously  leaves  the  drawing-master  to  do  the  best  he 
can  in  his  twelve  lessons,  and  with  courteous  unkindness 
permits  the  young  women  of  England  to  remain  under  the 
impression  that  they  can  learn  to  draw  with  less  pains  than 
they  can  learn  to  dance.  I  have  had  practical  experience 
enough,  howevt-r,  to  convince  me  that  this  treatment  of  the 
amatenr  student  is  unjust.  Young  girls  will  work  with 
steailiest  perseverance  when  once  they  understand  the  need  of 
labour,  and  are  convinced  that  drawing  is  a  kind  of  language 
which  may  for  ordinary  purposes  be  learned  as  easily  as 
French  and  German  ;  this  language,  also,  having  its  grammar 
and  its  pronunciation,  to  be  conquered  or  acquired  only  by 
l)ersistence  in  irksome  exercise — an  eriof  in  a  form  being  as 
i-ntirely  aiwl  simply  an  error  as  a  mistake  in  a  tense,  and  an 
ill-drawn  line  as  lepi-ehensible  as  a  vidgar  accent. 

And  I  attach  great  importance  to  the  sound  education  of 
our  younger  females  in  art,  thinking  that  in  England  the 
inirsery  and  the  drawing-room  are  periia])S  the  most  influen- 
ti:d  of  academies.  We  address  ourselves  in  \ain  to  the  edu- 
cation of  the  artist  while  the  demand  for  his  work  is  uncer- 
tain or  unintelligent;  nor  can  art  be  considered  as  having  any 
serious  influence  on  a  nation  while  gilded  papers  form  the  prin- 


180  A  JOY    FOll   EVER. 

cipal  splendour  of  the  reception  room,  and  ill-wrought  thougii 
costly  trinkets  the  principal  enteitainment  of  the  boudoir. 

It  is  surely,  therefore,  to  be  regretted,  that  the  art-educa- 
tion of  our  Government  schools  is  addressed  so  definitely  to 
the  guidance  uf  the  artisan,  and  is  therefore  so  little  acknowl- 
edged hitherto  by  the  general  public,  especially  by  its  upper 
classes.  I  have  not  acquaintance  enough  with  the  practical 
working  of  that  system  to  venture  any  expression  of  opinion 
respecting  its  general  expediency ;  but  it  is  my  conviction 
that,  so  far  as  references  are  involved  in  it  to  the  designing 
of  patterns  capable  of  being  prochiced  by  machinery,  such  ref- 
erences must  materially  diminish  its  utility  considered  as  a 
general  system  of  instruction. 

We  are  still,  therefore,  driven  to  the  same  point, — the  need 
of  an  authoritative  recommendation  of  some  method  of  study 
to  the  public  ;  a  method  determined  upon  by  the  concurrence 
of  some  of  our  best  painters,  and  avowedly  sanctioned  by  them, 
so  as  to  leave  no  room  for  hesitation  in  its  acceptance. 

Nor  need  it  be  thought  that,  because  the  ultimate  methods 
of  work  employed  by  painters  vary  according  to  the  particu- 
lar effects  produced  by  each,  there  would  be  any  difficulty  in 
obtaining  their  collective  assent  to  a  system  of  elementary 
precept.  The  facts  of  which  it  is  necessary  that  the  student 
should  be  assured  in  his  early  efforts,  are  so  simple,  so  few, 
and  so  well  known  to  all  able  draughtsmen  that,  as  I  have 
just  said,  it  would  be  rather  doubt  of  the  need  of  stating  what 
seemed  to  them  self-evident,  than  reluctance  to  speak  authori- 
tatively on  points  capable  of  dispute,  that  would  stand  in  the 
way  of  their  giving  form  to  a  code  of  general  instruction.  To 
take  merely  two  instances :  It  will  perhaps  appear  hardly 
credible  that  among  amateur  students,  however  far  advanced 
in  more  showy  accomplishments,  there  will  not  be  found  one 
in  a  hundred  who  can  make  an  accurate  drawing  to  scale.    Tt 


EDUCATION    IN    ART.  131 

is  much,  if  they  can  copy  anything  with  approximate  fidelity 
of  its  real  size.  Now,  the  inaccuracy  of  eye  which  prevents  a 
student  from  drawing  to  scale  is  in  fact  nothing  else  than  an 
entire  want  of  appreciation  of  proportion,  and  theiefure  of 
composition.  Fie  who  alters  the  relations  of  dimensions  to 
each  other  in  his  copy,  shows  that  he  does  not  enjoy  those  re- 
lations in  the  original — that  is  to  say,  that  all  appreciation  of 
noble  design  (which  is  based  on  the  most  exquisite  relations 
of  magnitude)  is  impossible  to  him.  To  give  him  habits  of 
mathematical  accuracy  in  transference  of  the  outline  of  com- 
plex form  is,  therefore,  among  the  first,  and  even  among  the 
most  important,  means  of  educating  his  taste.  A  student  who 
can  fix  with  precision  the  cardinal  points  of  a  bird's  wing,  ex- 
tended in  any  fixed  position,  and  can  then  draw  the  curves  of 
its  individual  plumes  without  measurable  error,  has  advanced 
further  towards  a  power  of  understanding  the  design  of  the 
great  masters  than  he  could  by  reading  many  volumes  of  criti- 
cism, or  passing  many  months  in  undisciplined  examination  of 
woiks  of  art. 

Again,  it  will  be  found  that  among  amateur  students  there 
is  almost  uiiiversal  deficiency  in  the  power  of  expressing  the 
roundness  of  a  surface.  They  frequently  draw  with  consider- 
able dexterity  and  vigour,  but  never  attain  the  slightest  sense 
of  those  modulations  in  foim  which  can  oniv  be  expressed  by 
gradations  in  shade.  They  leave  shaip  edges  to  their  blots  of 
colour,  sharp  angles  in  their  contours  of  lines,  and  conceal 
from  themselves  their  incaiiacity  of  completion  bv  redun- 
dance of  object.  Tiie  assurance  to  such  persons  that  no 
object  could  be  riglitly  seen  or  ilrawn  until  the  tlraughtsman 
had  acquired  the  power  of  modulating  surfaces  by  gradations 
wrought  with  some  pointed  instrument  (whether  pen,  pencil, 
or  chalk),  would  at  once  prevent  much  vain  labour,  and  put 
an  end  to  many  errors  of  that  worst  kind   which   not  only  re- 


133  A   JOY    FOR   E^'ER. 

tard  the  student,  but  blind  bim  ;  wliicli  prevent  him  from  citlier 
altaining  excellence  himself,  or  understanding  it  in  others. 

It  would  be  easy,  did  time  admit  it,  to  give  instances  of 
other  principles  which  it  is  equally  esseutial  that  the  student 
should  know,  and  certain  that  all  painters  of  eminence  would 
sanction;  while  even  those  respecting  which  some  doubt  may 
exist  in  their  application  of  consummate  practice,  are  yet  per- 
fectly determinable,  so  far  as  they  are  needed  to  guide  a  be- 
ginner. It  may,  for  instance,  be  a  question  how  far  local 
colour  should  be  treated  as  an  element  of  chiaro-oscuro  in  a 
master's  drawing  of  the  human  form.  But  there  can  be  no 
question  that  it  must  be  so  treated  in  a  boy's  study  of  a  tulip  or 
a  trout. 

A  still  more  important  point  would  be  gained  if  authorita- 
tive testimony  of  the  same  kind  could  be  given  to  the  merit 
and  exclusive  sufficiency  of  any  series  of  examples  of  works  of 
art,  such  as  could  at  once  be  put  within  the  reach  of  masters  of 
schools.  For  the  modern  student  labours  under  heavy  dis- 
advantages in  what  at  first  sight  might  appear  an  assistance 
to  him,  namely,  the  number  of  examples  of  many  different 
styles  which  surround  him  in  galleries  or  museums.  His 
mind  is  disturbed  by  the  inconsistencies  of  various  excellences, 
and  by  his  own  predilection  for  false  beauties  in  second  or 
thiid-rate  works.  He  is  thus  prevented  fiom  observing  any 
one  example  long  enough  to  understand  its  merit,  or  follow^ 
ing  any  one  method  long  enough  to  obtain  fai'ility  in  its  prac- 
tice. It  seems,  therefore,  very  desirable  that  some  such  stand- 
ard of  art  should  be  fixed  for  all  our  schools, — a  standard 
which,  it  must  be  remembered,  need  not  necessarily  be  the 
highest  possible,  provided  only  it  is  the  rightest  p  )ssible.  It  is 
not  to  be  hoped  that  the  student  should  imitate  works  of  the 
most  exalted  merit,  but  much  to  be  desired  that  he  should  be 
guided  by  those  which  have  fewest  faults. 


EDUCATION    IN    AKT.  133 

Perhaps,  therefore,  the  most  serviceable  example  whicli 
could  be  set  before  youth  might  be  found  in  the  studies  or 
drawings,  rather  than  in  the  piciiires,  of  first-rate  masters  ; 
and  the  art  of  photography  enables  us  to  put  renderings  of 
such  studies,  which  for  most  practical  purposes  are  as  good 
as  the  originals,  on  tlie  walls  of  every  school  in  the  kingdom. 
Supposing  (I  merely  name  these  as  examples  of  what  I  mean) 
the  standard  of  manner  in  light-and-shade  drawing  fixed  by 
Leonardo's  study,  No.  19,  in  the  collection  of  photographs 
lately  published  from  drawings  in  the  Florence  Galleiy  ; 
the  standard  of  pen  drawing  with  a  wash,  fixed  by  Titian's 
sketch  No.  30  in  the  same  collection;  that  of  ejching,  fixed 
by  Rembrandt's  spotted  shell;  and  that  of  point  work  with 
the  pure  lines,  by  Diirer's  crest  with  the  cock  ;  every  effort  of 
the  pupil,  whatever  the  instrument  in  his  hands,  would  infal- 
libly tend  in  a  right  direction,  and  the  perception  of  the  merits 
of  these  four  works,  or  of  any  others  like  them,  once  attained 
thoroughly,  by  efibrts,  however  distant  or  despairing,  to  copy 
portions  of  them,  would  lead  securely  in  due  time  to  the  ap- 
preciation of  their  modes  of  excellence. 

I  cannot,  of  course,  within  the  limits  of  this  paper,  proceed 
to  any  statement  of  tlie  present  lequiieraents  of  the  English 
operative  as  r<'gards  art  education.  But.  I  do  not  regret  this, 
for  it  seems  to  me  very  dcsiiahle  that  our  attention  should  for 
the  present  be  concentrated  on  the  more  immediate  object  of 
general  instruction.  Whatever  the  public  deramid  the  artist 
will  soon  produce;  and  tlie  best  education  which  the  operative 
can  receive  is  the  refusal  of  bad  work  and  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  good.  There  is  no  want  of  genius  among  ns,  still 
less  of  industry.  The  least  that  we  do  is  laborious,  and  the 
worst  is  wondt^rful.  But  there  is  a  want  among  us,  deep  and 
wide,  of  discretion  in  directing  toil,  and  of  delight  in  being  led 
by  imagination.     In  past  time,  though  the  masses  of  the  nation 


134  A  JOT   FOB   EVER. 

were  less  informed  than  they  are  now,  they  were  for  that  very 
leason  simpler  judges  and  happier  gazers  ;  it  must  be  ours  to 
substitute  the  gracious  sympathy  of  the  understanding  for  the 
bright  giatitude  of  innocence.  An  artist  can  always  paint  well 
for  those  who  are  lightly  pleased  or  wisely  displeased,  but  he 
cannot  paint  for  those  who  are  dull  in  applause  and  false  in  con- 
demnation. 


ART  SCHOOL  NOTES. 
EemarJcs  addressed  to  the  Mansfield  Art  Mffht  Class,  October  14, 1873.* 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  giving  of  prizes  can  only  be 
justified  on  the  ground  of  their  being  the  reward  of  superior 
diligence  and  more  obedient  attention  to  the  directions  of  the 
teacher.  They  must  never  be  supposed,  because  practically  they 
never  can  become,  indications  of  superior  genius;  unless  in  so 
far  as  genius  is  likely  to  be  diligent  and  obedient,  beyond  the 
strength  and  temper  of  the  dull. 

But  it  so  frequently  happens  that  the  stimulus  of  vanity, 
acting  on  minds  of  inferior  calibre,  produces  for  a  time  an  in- 
dustry surpassing  the  tranquil  and  self-possessed  exertion  of 
real  power,  that  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  custom  of 
bestowing  prizes  at  all  may  not  ultimately  cease  in  our  higher 
Schools  of  Art,  unless  in  the  form  of  substantial  assistance 
given  to  deserving  students  who  stand  in  need  of  it :  a  kind 
of  prize,  the  claim  to  which,  in  its  nature,  would  depend  more 
on  accidental  circumstances,  and  generally  good  conduct,  than 
on  genius. 

But,  without    any    reference  to   the   opinion   of   others,  and. 

*  This  address  was  written  for  the  Art  Night  Class,  Mansfield,  but  not 
delivered  by  me.  In  my  absence — 1  forget  from  what  cause,  but  inev 
itable — the  Duke  of  St.  Albaus  liououred  me  by  reading  it  to  the  meeiiug. 


ART    SCUOOL   NOTES,  135 

vitliout  any  chance  of  partiality  in  your  own,  tbere  is  one  test 
by  which  you  can  all  determine  the  rate  of  your  real  progress. 

Examine,  after  every  period  of  renewed  industry,  how  far 
you  have  enlarged  your  faculty  of  admiration. 

Consider  how  much  more  you  can  see  to  reverence,  in  the 
work  of  masters;  and  how  much  more  to  love,  in  the  work  of 
nature. 

Tliis  is  the  only  constant  and  infallible  test  of  progress  :  that 
you  wonder  more  at  the  work  of  great  men,  and  that  you  care 
more  for  natural  objects. 

You  have  often  been  told,  by  your  teachers  to  expect  this 
last  result ;  but  I  fear  that  the  tendency  of  modern  thought 
is  to  reject  the  idea  of  that  essential  difference  in  rank  between 
one  intellect  and  another,  of  which  increasing  reverence  is  the 
wise  acknowledgment. 

You  may,  at  least  in  early  years,  test  accurately  your  power 
of  doing  anything  in  the  least  rightly,  by  your  increasing  con- 
viction that  you  never  will  be  able  to  do  it  as  well  as  it  has 
been  done  by  others. 

That  is  a  lesson,  I  repeat,  which  diffl'rs  much,  I  fear,  fnnn 
the  one  yon  are  commonly  taught.  The  vulgar  and  incompar- 
ably false  saying  cf  Macaulay's,  that  the  intellectual  giants  of 
one  age  become  the  intellectual  pigmies  of  the  next,  has  been 
the  text  of  too  many  sermons  lately  preached  to  you. 

You  think  you  are  going  to  do  better  things — each  of  you — 
than  Titian  and  I^hidias — write  better  than  Virgil — think  more 
wisely  than  Solomon. 

My  good  young  people,  this  is  the  foolishest,  quite  pre-em- 
inently— perhaps  almost  the  harmfullest — notion  that  could 
possibly  be  put  into  your  ein[)ty  little  eggshells  of  heads. 
There  is  not  one  in  a  million  of  you  who  can  ever  be  great  in 
arnj  thing.  To  be  greater  than  the  greatest  that  liave  been,  is 
permitted  perhaps  to  one  man  in  Europe  in   the  course  of  two 


136  A   JOY   FOK   EVER. 

or  three  centuries.  Bat  because  you  cannot  be  Handel  and 
Mozart — is  it  any  reason  why  you  should  not  leain  to  sing 
"  God  save  the  Queen  "  proi)erly,  when  you  have  a  mind  to  ? 
Becau>e  a  girl  cannot  be  prima  donna  in  the  Italian  Opera,  is 
it  any  reason  that  she  should  nut  learn  to  play  a  jio-  for  her 
brothers  and  sisters  in  good  time,  or  a  soft  little  tune  for  her 
tired  mother,  or  that  she  should  not  sing  to  please  herself' 
among  the  dew,  on  a  May  morning?  Believe  me,  joy,  humil- 
ity, and  usefulness  always  go  together:  as  insolence  with  mis- 
ery, and  these  both  with  desiructiveness.  You  may  learn  with 
proud  teachers  how  to  thiow  down  the  Vendome  Column,  and 
burn  the  Louvre,  but  never  how  to  lay  so  much  as  one  touch  of 
safe  colour,  or  one  layer  of  steady  stone;  and  if  indeed  there  be 
among  you  a  youth  of  true  genius,  be  assured  that  he  will  dis- 
tinguish himself  fiist,  not  by  petulanc^e  or  by  disdain,  but  by 
discerning  firtjily  what  to  admire,  and  whom  to  obey. 

It  will,  I  hope,  be  the  result  of  the  interest  lately  awakened 
is  ait  through  our  provinces,  to  enable  each  town  of  impor- 
tance to  obtain,  in  permanent  possession,  a  few — and  it  is  de- 
sirable there  should  be  no  more  than  a  few — examples  of  con- 
summate and  masterful  art :  an  engraving  or  two  by  Diirer — 
a  single  portrait  by  Reynolds^a  fifteenth-cenlury  Florentine 
drawing — a  thirteenth-century  French  piece  of  painted  glass, 
and  the  like ;  and  that,  in  every  town  occupied  in  a  given 
manufacture,  examples  of  unquestionable  excellence  in  that  man- 
ufacture should  be  made  easily  accessible  in  its  civic  museum. 

I  must  ask  you,  however,  to  observe  very  carefully  that  I 
use  the  word  manufacture  in  its  literal  and  proper  sense.  It 
means  the  making  of  things  hy  the  hand.  It,  does  not  mean 
the  making  them  by  machinery.  And,  while  I  plead  with  you 
for  a  true  humility  in  rivalship  with  the  works  of  others,  I  plead 
with  vou  also  for  a  just  pride  in  what  you  really  can  honestly  do 
yourself. 


AUT    SCHOOL   NOTES.  137 

You  must  noitln^r  tliink  your  work  the  best  ever  done  by 
man  : — nor,  on  tlie  other  hand,  think  that  the  tongs  and  pokor 
can  do  better — and  that,  although  you  are  wiser  than  Solomon, 
all  this  wisdom  of  yours  can  be  outshone  by  a  shovelful  of 
coke. 

Let  me  take,  for  instance,  the  manufacituve  of  lace,  for  which, 
I  believe,  your  neighbouring  town  of  Nottingham  enjoys  renown. 
There  is  still  some  distinction  between  machine-made  and  hand- 
made lace.  I  will  suppose  that  distinction  so  far  done  away 
witli,  that,  a  pattern  once  invented,  you  can  spin  lace  as  fast  as 
you  now  do  thread.  Eveiybody  then  might  wear,  not  only  lace 
collars,  but  lace  gowns.  Do  you  think  they  would  be  mova 
comfortable  in  them  than  they  are  now  in  plain  stuff — or  that, 
when  everybody  could  wear  them,  anybody  would  be  proud  nf 
wearing  one?  A  spider  may  perhaps  be  rationally  proud  of 
Ids  own  cobweb,  even  though  all  the  fields  in  the  morning  are 
covered  with  the  like,  for  he  made  it  himself — but  su[)pose  a 
machine  spun  it  for  him  ? 

(Suppose  all  the  gossamer  were  Nottingham-made,  would  a 
sensible  spider  be  cither  prouder,  or  happier,  think  you  ? 

A  sensible  spider!  You  cannot  perhaps  imagine  such  a 
creature.  Yet  surely  a  spider  is  clever  enough  for  his  own 
ends? 

You  think  him  an  insensible  spider,  only  because  he  cannot 
understand  yours— and  is  apt  to  impede  yours.  Well,  be  as- 
sured of  this:  sense  in  hum m  creatures  is  shown  also,  not  by 
chiverness  in  promoting  their  own  ends  and  interests,  but  by 
fjuickness  in  understanding  other  people's  ends  and  interests, 
and  by  putting  our  own  work  ami  keeping  our  own  wishes  in 
harmony  with  theirs. 

But  I  return  to  my  point,  of  cheapness.  You  Hon't  think 
that  it  would  be  convenient,  or  even  cieditablo,  fa-  wonn  n  tf> 
wash  the  dooi  steps   or  dish  the  dinneis   in    lace  gowns?     N  ly, 


138  A   JOY   FOR   EVER. 

even  for  the  most  ladylike  occupations — reading,  or  writing, 
or  playing  with  her  children — do  you  think  a  lace  gown,  or 
aveu  a  lace  collar,  so  great  an  advantage  or  dignity  to  a 
woman  ?  If  you  think  of  it,  you  will  find  the  whole  value  of 
lace,  as  a  possession,  depends  on  the  fact  of  its  having  a  beauty 
which  has  been  the  reward  of  industry  and  attention. 

That  the  thing  itself  is  a  prize — a  thing  which  everybody 
cannot  have.  That  it  proves  by  the  look  of  it,  the  ability  of  its 
maker  ;  that  it  proves,  by  the  rarity  of  it,  the  dignity  of  its 
wearer — either  that  she  has  been  so  industrious  as  to  save 
money,  which  can  buy,  say,  a  piece  of  jewellery,  of  gold  tissue, 
or  of  fine  lace — or  else,  that  she  is  a  noble  person,  to  whom  her 
neighbours  concede,  as  an  honour,  the  privilege  of  wearing  finer 
dress  than  they. 

If  they  all  choose  to  have  lace  too — if  it  ceases  to  be  a  prize 
— it  becomes,  does  it  not,  only  a  cobweb? 

The  real  good  of  a  piece  of  lace,  then,  you  will  find,  is  that 
it  should  show,  first,  that  the  designer  of  it  had  a  pretty  fancy; 
next,  that  the  maker  of  it  had  fine  fingers  ;  lastly,  that  the 
wearer  of  it  has  worthiness  or  dignity  enough  to  obtain  what 
is  difficult  to  obtain,  and  common  sense  enough  not  to  wear 
it  on  all  occasions.  I  limit  myself,  in  what  farther  I  have  to 
say,  to  the  question  of-  the  manufacture — nay,  of  one  requisite 
in  the  manufacture  :  that  which  I  have  just  called  a  pretty  fancy. 

What  do  you  suppose  I  mean  by  a  pretty  fancy  ?  Do  you 
think  that,  by  learning  to  draw%  and  looking  at  flowers,  you 
will  ever  get  the  ability  to  design  a  piece  of  lace  beautifully  ? 
By  no  means.  If  that  were  so,  everybody  would  soon  learn  to 
draw — everybody  would  design  lace  prettily — and  then, — no- 
body would  be  paid  for  designing  it.  To  some  extent,  that  will 
indeed  be  tlie  result  of  modern  endeavour  to  teach  design.  But 
against  all  such  endeavours,  mother-wit,  in  the  end,  will  hold 
her  own. 


ART   SCHOOL   NOTES.  139 

But  anybody  who  has  tliis  motlier-wit,  may  make  the  exer- 
cise of  it  more  pleasant  to  themselves,  and^  more  useful  to  other 
people,  by  learning  to  draw. 

An  Indian  worker  in  gold,  or  a  Scandinavian  worker  in  iron, 
or  an  old  French  Avorker  in  thread,  couM  produce  indeed 
beautiful  designs  out  of  nothing  but  groups  of  knots  and  spi- 
rals ;  but  you,  when  yott  are  rightly  educated,  may  render  your 
knots  and  spirals  infinitely  more  interesting  by  making  them 
suggestive  of  natural  forms,  and  rich  in  elements  of  true  knowl- 
edge. 

You  know,  for  instance,  the  pattern  which  for  centuries  has 
been  the  basis  of  ornament  in  Indian  shawls — the  bulging  leaf 
ending  in  a  spiral.  The  Indian  produces  beautiful  designs  with 
nothing  but  that  spiral.  You  cannot  better  his  powers  of 
design,  but  you  make  them  more  civil  and  useful  by  adding 
knowledge  of  nature  to  invention. 

Suppose  you  learn  to  draw  rightly,  and,  therefore,  to  know 
correctly  the  spirals  of  springing  ferns — not  that  you  may  give 
ugly  names  to  all  the  species  of  them — but  that  you  may  under- 
stand the  grace  and  vitality  of  every  hour  of  their  existence. 
Suppose  you  have  sense  and  cleverness  enough  to  translate  the 
essential  character  of  this  beauty  into  forms  expressible  by 
simple  lines — therefore  expressible  by  thread — you  might  then 
have  a  series  of  fern-patterns  which  would  each  contain  points 
of  distinctive  interest  and  beanty,  and  of  scientific  truth,  and  yet 
bo  variable  by  fancy,  with  quite  as  much  ease  as  the  meaning- 
less Indian  one.  Similarly,  there  is  no  form  of  leaf,  of  flower, 
or  of  insect,  which  might  not  become  suggestive  to  you,  and  ex- 
pressible in  terms  of  manufacture,  so  as  to  be  interesting,  and 
useful  to  others. 

Only  don't  think  that  this  kind  of  study  will  ever  "  pay,"  in 
the  vulgar  sense. 

It  will   make  you  wiser  and  happier.       But  do   you  suppose 


140  A  JOY   FOB   EVER. 

that  it  is  the  law  of  God,  or  nature,  that  people  shall  be  paid 
in  money  for  becomyig  wiser  and  happier  ?  They  are  so,  by 
that  law,  for  honest  work  ;  and  as  all  honest  work  makes  peo- 
ple wiser  and  happier,  they  are  indeed,  in  some  sort,  paid  in 
money  for  becoming  wise. 

But  if  you  seek  wisdom  only  that  you  may  get  money,  be- 
lieve me,  you  are  exactly  on  the  foolishest  of  all  fools'  er- 
rands. "  She  is  more  precious  tliau  rubies  " — but  do  you  think 
that  is  only  because  she  will  help  you  to  huij  rubies? 

"All  the  things  thou  canst  desire  are  not  to  be  compared  to 
her."  Do  you  think  that  is  only  because  she  will  enable  you  to 
(ret  all  the  things  you  desire  ?  She  is  oflfered  to  you  as  a  bless- 
ing in  herself.  She  is  the  reward  of  kindness,  of  modesty,  of 
industry.  She  is  the  Prize  of  Prizes — and  alike  in  poverty  or 
ill  riches — the  strength  of  your  Life  now,  the  earnest  of  what- 
ever Life  is  to  come. 


SOCIAL  POLICY. 

BASED    ON    NATURAL    SELECTION. 

Paper  read  before  the  Metaphysical  Society,  May  Wth,  1875.* 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  vSocieties  like  this  of  ours, 
happy  in  including  members  not  a  little  diverse  in  thought 
and  various  in  knowledge,  might  be  more  useful  to  the  public 
than  perhaps  they  can  fairly  be  said  to  have  approved  them- 
selves hitherto,  by  using  their  variety  of  power  rather  to  sup- 
port intellectual  conclusions  by  concentric  props,  than  to  shake 
them  with  rotatory  stones  of  wit  ;  and  modestly  endeavouring 

*  I  trust  that  tbe  Society  will  not  consider  its  privileges  violated  by  the 
publication  of  au  essay,  which,  for  such  audieucC;,  I  wrote  with  more  than 
ordinary  care. 


THE    BASIS    OF    SOCIAL    POLICY.  141 

to  initiate  the  building  of  walls  for  the  Bridal  city  of  Science,  in 
whicl)  no  man  will  care  to  identify  the  particular  stones  be  lays, 
rather  than  conii>lyiug  farther  with  the  existing  picturesque,  but 
wasteful,  practice  of  every  knight  to  throw  up  a  feudal  tower 
of  his  own  opinions,  tenable  only  by  the  most  active  pugnacity, 
and  pierced  rather  with  arrow-?liis  from  which  to  annov  his 
neighbours,  than  windows  to  admit  light  or  air. 

The  paper  read  at  our  last  meeting  was  unquestionably, 
within  the  limits  its  writer  has  prescribed  to  himself,  so  logi- 
cally sound,  that  (encouraged  also  by  the  suggestion  of  some  of 
our  most  influential  members)  I  shall  endeavour  to  make  the 
matter  of  our  to-night's  debate  consequent  upon  it,  and  sugges- 
tive of  possibly  further  advantageous  deductions. 

!t  will  be  remembered  that,  in  reference  to  the  statement  in 
the  Bishop  of  Peterborough's  Paper,  of  the  moral  inditference 
of  certain  courses  of  conduct  on  the  postulate  of  the  existence 
only  of  a  Mechanical  base  of  Morals,  it  was  observed  by  Dr. 
Adam  Clarke  that,  even  on  such  mechanical  basis,  the  word 
''  moral "  might  still  be  applied  specially  to  any  course  of 
action  which  tended  to  the  development  of  the  human  race. 
Whereupon  I  ventured  myself  to  inquire,  in  what  direction 
such  development  was  to  be  understood  as  taking  place  ;  and 
the  discussion  of  this  point  being  then  dropped  for  want  of 
time,  I  would  ask  the  Society's  permission  to  bring  it  again  be- 
fore them  this  evening  in  a  somewhat  more  extended  form  ;  for 
in  reality  the  question  respecting  the  development  of  men  is 
twofold, — fiist,  namely, — in  what  direction;  and  secondly,  in 
what  social  relations,  it  is  to  be  sought, 

I  would  therefore  at  present  ask  more  deliberately  than  I 
could  at  our  last  meeting, — first,  in  what  direction  it  is  desirable 
that  the  development  of  humanity  should  take  place  ?  Should 
it,  for  instance,  as  in  Greece,  be  of  physical  beauty, — emulation 
(Ilesiod's  second  Eris), — pugnacity  and   patriotism  ?  or,  as  in 


143  A   JOY   FOR   EVER. 

modern  England,  of  physical  ugliness, — envy,  (Hesiod's  first 
Eris), — cowardice,  and  selfishness  ?  or,  as  by  a  conceivably 
humane  but  hitherto  unexampled — education  might  be  at- 
tempted, of  physical  beauty,  humility,  courage,  and  affection, 
which  should  make  all  the  world  one  native  land,  and  naGa 
yi}  racpoi'i 

I  do  not  doubt  but  that  the  first  automatic  impulse  of  all  our 
automatic  friends  here  present,  on  bearing  this  sentence,  will 
be  strenuously  to  deny  the  accuracy  of  my  definition  of  the  aims 
of  modern  English  education.  Without  attempting  to  defend  it, 
I  would  only  observe  that  this  automatic  development  of  solar 
caloric  in  scientific  minds  must  be  grounded  on  an  automatic 
sensation  of  injustice  done  to  the  members  of  the  School  Board, 
as  well  as  to  many  other  automatically  well-meaning  and  in- 
genious persons ;  and  that  this  sense  of  the  injuriousness  and 
offensiveness  of  my  definition  cannot  possibly  have  any  other 
basis  (if  I  may  be  permitted  to  continue  my  professional  simili- 
tudes) than  the  fallen  remnants  and  goodly  stones,  not  one  now 
left  on  another,  but  still  forming  an  unremovable  cumulus  of 
ruin,  and  eternal  Birs  Nimroud,  as  it  were,  on  the  site  of  the 
old  belfrv  of  Christian  morality,  whose  top  looked  once  so  like 
touching  Heaven. 

For  no  offence  could  be  taken  at  my  definition,  unless  trace- 
able to  adamantine  conviction,— that  ugliness,  however  indefin- 
able, envy,  however  natural,  and  cowardice,  however  com- 
mercially profitable,  are  nevertheless  eternally  disgraceful ; 
contrary,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  grace  of  our  Lord  Christ,  if 
there  be  among  us  any  Christ ;  to  the  grace  of  the  King's  Maj- 
esty, if  there  be  among  us  any  King  ;  and  to  the  grace  even  of 
Christless  and  Kingless  Manhood,  if  there  be  among  us  any 
Manhood. 

To  this  fixed  conception  of  a  difference  betwen  Better  and 
Worse,  or,  when  carried  to  the  extreme,  between  good  and  evil, 


THE   BASIS   OF   SOCIAL   POLICY.  143 

in  conduct,  we  all,  it  seems  to  rae,  instinctively  and  therefore 
rightly,  attach  the  term  of  Moral  sense; — the  sense,  for  in- 
stance, that  it  would  be  better  if  the  members  of  this  Society 
who  are  usually  automatically  absent  were,  instead,  automati- 
cally present ;  or  better,  that  this  Paper,  if  (which  is,  perhaps, 
too  likely)  it  be  thought  automatically  impertinent,  bad  been 
made,  by  the  molecular  action  of  my  cerebral  particles,  pertinent. 

Trusting,  therefore,  without  more  ado,  to  the  strength  of 
rampart  in  this  Old  Sarum  of  the  Moral  sense,  however  sub- 
dued into  vague  banks  under  the  modern  steam-plough,  I  will 
venture  to  suppose  the  first  of  ray  two  questions  to  have  been 
answered  by  the  choice  on  the  part  at  least  of  a  majority  of 
our  Council,  of  the  third  direction  of  development,  above 
specified  as  being  the  properly  called  "  moral  "  one;  and  will 
go  on  to  the  second  subject  of  inquiry,  both  more  difficult  and 
of  great  practical  importance  in  the  political  crisis  through 
which  Europe  is  passing, — namely,  what  relations  between  men 
are  to  be  desired,  or  with  resignation  allowed,  in  the  course  of 
their  Moral  Development? 

Whether,  that  is  to  say,  we  should  try  to  make  some  men 
beautiful  at  the  cost  of  ugliness  in  others,  and  some  men  virtu- 
ous at  the  cost  of  vice  in  others, — or  rather,  all  men  beautiful 
and  virtuous  in  the  degree  possible  to  each  under  a  system  of 
equitable  education  ?  And  evidently  our  first  business  is  to 
consider  in  what  terms  the  choice  is  put  to  us  by  Nature. 
What  can  we  do,  if  we  would  ?  What  must  we  do,  whether 
we  will  or  not  ?  How  high  can  we  raise  the  level  of  a  difl^"used 
Learning  and  Morality  ?  and  how  far  shall  we  be  compelled,  if 
we  limit,  to  exaggerate  the  advantages  and  injuries  of  our 
system  ?  And  are  we  prepared,  if  the  extremity  be  inevitable, 
to  push  to  their  utmost  the  relations  implied  when  we  take  oflf 
our  hats  to  each  other,  and  triple  the  tiara  of  the  Saint  in 
Heaven  while  we  leave  the  sinner  bareheaded  in  Cocytus? 


144  A    JOY    FOR    KVKK. 

It  is  well,  perhaps,  that  I  should  at  once  confess  myself  to 
hold  the  principle  of  limitation  in  its  utmost  extent;  and  to 
entertain  no  doubt  of  the  Tightness  of  my  ideal,  but  only  of  its 
feasibility.  I  am  ill  at  ease,  for  instance,  in  my  uncertainty 
whether  our  greatly  regretted  Chairman  will  ever  be  Pope,  or 
whether  some  people  whom  I  could  mention,  (not,  of  course, 
members  of  our  society,)  will  ever  be  in  Cocytus. 

But  there  is  no  need,  if  we  could  be  candid,  to  debate  the 
principle  in  the  violences  of  operation,  any  more  than  the 
proper  methods  of  distributing  food,  on  the  supposition  that 
the  difference  between  a  Paris  dinner  and  a  platter  of  Scotch 
porridge  must  imply  that  one-half  of  mankind  are  to  die  of 
eating,  and  the  rest  of  having  nothing  to  eat,  I  will,  there- 
fore, take  for  example  a  case  in  which  the  disciimination  is 
less  conclusive. 

When  I  stop  writing  metaphysics  this  morning,  it  will  be  to 
arrange  some  drawings  for  a  young  lady  to  copy.  Thev  are 
leaves  of  the  best  illuminated  MSS.  I  have,  and  I  am  going  to 
spend  my  whole  afternoon  in  explaining  to  her  what  she  is  to 
aim  at  in  copying  them. 

Now,  I  would  not  lend  these  leaves  to  any  other  young 
lady  that  I  know  of;  nor  give  up  my  afternoon  to,  perhaps, 
more  than  two  or  three  other  young  ladies  that  I  know  of. 
But  to  keep  to  the  first-instanced  one,  I  lend  her  my  books, 
and  give  her,  for  what  they  are  worth,  my  time  and  most  care- 
ful teaching,  because  she  at  present  paints  butterflies  better 
than  any  other  girl  I  know,  and  has  a  peculiar  capacity  for 
the  softening  of  plumes  and  finessing  of  antennae.  Grant  me 
to  be  a  good  teacher,  and  grant  her  disposition  to  be  such  as  I 
suppose,  and  the  result  will  be  what  might  at  first  appear  an 
indefensible  iniquitv,  namely,  that  this  giri,  who  has  already 
excellent  gifts,  having  also  exo  lent  teaching,  will  become 
perhaps  the  best  butterfly-paintei  in  England  ;  while  myriads 


THE    liASIS    OF    SOCIAL    POLICY.  145 

of  other  girls,  having  originally  inferior  powers,  and  attract- 
ing no  attention  from  the  Slade  Professor,  will  utterly  lose 
their  at  present  cultivable  faculties  of  entomological  art,  and 
sink  into  the  vulgar  career  of  wives  and  mothers,  to  which  we 
have ,  Mr.  Mill's  authority  for  holding  it  a  grievoug  injustice 
that  any  girl  should  be  irrevocably  condemned. 

There  is  no  need  that  I  should  be  careful  in  enumerating 
the  various  modes,  analogous  to  this,  in  which  the  Natural 
selection  of  which  we  have  lately  heard,  perhaps,  somewhat 
more  than  enough,  provokes  and  approves  the  Professional 
selection  which  I  am  so  bold  as  to  defend  ;  and  if  the  auto- 
matic instincts  of  equity  in  us,  which  revolt  against  the  great 
ordinance  of  Nature  and  practice  of  Man  that  "  to  him  that 
hath,  shall  more  be  given,"  are  to  be  listened  to  when  the 
possessions  in  question  are  only  of  wisdom  and  virtue,  let 
them  at  least  prove  their  sincerity  by  correcting,  first,  the  in- 
justice which  has  established  itself  respecting  more  tangible 
and  more  esteemed  property;  and  terminating  the  singular 
arrangement  prevalent  in  commercial  Europe,  that  to  every 
man  with  a  hundred  pounds  in  his  pocket  there  shall  annually 
be  given  tiiree,  to  every  man  with  a  thousand,  thirty,  and  to 
every  man  v^ith  nothing,  none. 

I  am  content  here  to  leave  under  the  scrutiny  of  the  evening 
my  general  statement  that  as  human  development,  when 
moral,  is  with  special  effort  in  a  given  direction,  so,  when 
moral,  it  is  with  special  efi'ort  in  favour  of  a  limited  class ;  but 
I  yet  trespass  for  a  few  moments  on  your  patience  in  order  to 
note  that  the  acceptance  of  this  second  principle  still  leaves  it 
to  what  point  the  disfavour  of  the  reprobate  class,  or  the  privi- 
leges of  the  elect,  may  advisably  extend.  For  I  cannot  but  f«el 
for  my  own  part,  as  if  the  daily  bread  of  moral  instruction 
might  at  least  be  so  widely  broken  among  the  multitudes  as 
to  preserve  them  from  utter  destitution  and  pauperism  in  virtue ; 


146  A   JOY   FOR   EVER. 

and  that  even  the  simplest  and  lowest  of  the  rabble  should  not 
be  so  absolutely  sods  of  perdition,  but  that  each  might  say  for 
himself, — "  For  my  part — no  offence  to  the  General,  or  any  man 
of  quality — I  hope  to  be  saved."  Whereas  it  is,  on  the  con- 
trary, implied  by  the  habitual  expressions  of  the  wisest  aris- 
tocrats, that  the  completely  developed  persons  whose  Justice 
and  Fortitude — poles  to  the  Cardinal  points  of  virtue — are 
marked  as  their  sufficient  characteristics  by  the  great  Roman 
moralist  in  his  phrase,  "Justus,  et  tenax  propositi,"  will  in  the 
course  of  nature  be  opposed  by  a  civic  ardour,  not  merely  of 
the  innocent  and  ignorant,  but  of  persons  developed  in  a  con- 
trary direction  to  that  which  I  have  ventured  to  call  "  moral," 
and  therefore  not  merely  incapable  of  desiring  or  applauding 
what  is  right,  but  in  an  evil,  harmony,  ^rava  jubeniium,  clam- 
orously demanding  what  is  wrong. 

The  point  to  which  both  Natural  and  Divine  Selection  would 
permit  us  to  advance  in  severity  towards  this  profane  class,  to 
which  the  enduring  "  Ecce  Homo,"  or  manifestation  of  any 
propeily  human  sentiment  or  person,  must  always  be  instinc- 
tively abominable,  seem  to  be  conclusively  indicated  by  the 
order  following  on  the  parable  of  the  Talents, — "  Those  mine 
enemies,  bring  hither,  and  slay  them  before  me."  'Nor  does  it 
seem  reasonable,  on  the  other  hand,  to  set  the  limits  of  favour- 
itism more  narrowly.  For  even  if,  among  fallible  mortals, 
there  may  frequently  be  ground  for  the  hesitation  of  just  men 
to  award  the  punishment  of  death  to  their  enemies,  the  most 
beautiful  story,  to  my  present  knowledge,  of  all  antiquity,  that 
of  Cleobis  and  Bito,  might  suggest  to  them  the  fitness,  on 
some  occasions,  of  distributing  without  any  hesitation  the  re- 
ward of  death  to  their  friends.  For  sure  the  logical  conclusion 
of  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough,  respecting  the  treatment  due  to 
old  women  who  have  nothing  supernatural  about  them,  holds 
with  still  greater  force  when  applied  to  the  case  of  old  women 


InE   BASIS    OF    SOCIAL    POLICY.  147 

who  have  everything  supernatural  about  them ;  and  while  it 
might  remain  questionable  to  some  of  us,  whether  we  had  any- 
right  to  deprive  an  invahd  who  had  uo  soul  of  what  might  still 
remain  to  her  of  even  painful  earthly  existence,  it  would  surely 
on  the  most  religious  grounds  be  both  our  privilege  and  our 
duty,  at  once  to  dismiss  any  troublesome  sufferer  who  liad  a 
soul  to  the  distant  and  inoffensive  felicities  of  heaven. 

But  I  believe  my  hearers  will  approve  me  in  again  declin- 
ing to  disturb  the  serene  confidence  of  daily  action  by  these 
sjjeculations  in  extreme ;  the  really  useful  conclusion,  which,  it 
seems  to  mc,  cannot  be  evaded,  is  that  without  going  so  far  as 
the  exile  of  the  inconveniently  wicked,  and  translation  of  the 
inconveniently  sick,  to  their  proper  spiritual  mansions,  we  . 
should  at  least  be  certain  that  we  do  not  waste  care  in  pro- 
tracting disease  which  might  have  been  spent  in  preserving 
health  ;  that  we  do  not  appease  in  the  splendor  of  our  tur- 
reted  hospitals  the  feelings  of  compassion  which,  rightly  di- 
recteil,  might  have  prevented  the  need  of  them ;  nor  pride  our- 
selves on  the  peculiar  form  of  Christian  benevolence  which 
leaves  the  cottage  roofless  to  model  the  prison,  and  spends  it- 
self with  zealous  preference  wliere,  in  the  keen  words  of  Car- 
lyle,  if  you  desire  the  material  on  which  maximum  expenditure 
of  means  and  effort  will  produce  the  mininmm  result,  "  here 
yon  accurately  have  it." 

I  cannot  but,  in  conclusion,  most  respectfully,  but  most  ear- 
nestly, express  my  hope  that  measures  may  be  soon  taken  by 
the  Lonls  vSpiiitual  of  P^ngland  to  assure  her  doubting  mind  of 
the  real  existence  of  that  supernatural  revelation  of  the  basis  of 
morals  to  which  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough  referred  in  the 
close  of  his  paper ;  or  at  least  to  explain  to  her  bewildered 
populace  the  real  meaning  of  the  force  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments, whether  written  originally  by  the  finger  of  God  or  Man. 
To  me,  personally,  I  own,  as  one  of  that  bewildered  populace, 


148  A  JOY   FOR   EVER. 

that  the  essay  by  one  of  our  most  distiDguished  members  on 
the  Creed  of  Christeudom  seems  to  stand  in  need  of  explicit 
answer  from  our  Divines ;  but  if  not,  and  the  cou}raon  applica- 
tion of  the  terms  "  Word  of  God  "  to  the  books  of  Scripture  be 
against  all  questions  tenable,  it  becomes  yet  more  imperative 
on  the  interpreters  of  that  Scripture  to  see  that  they  are  not 
made  void  by  our  traditions,*  and  that'the  Mortal  sins  of  Cov- 
etousness,  Fraud,  Usury,  and  Contention  be  not  the  essence  of  a 
National  life  orally  professing  submission  to  the  laws  of  Christ, 
and  satisfaction  in  His  Love. 

J.    RUSKIN. 

*  "  Tliou  Shalt,  not  covet ;  but  tradition 
Approves  all  forms  of  Competition." 

Akthuk  Clough. 


THE    END. 


PKE-UAriIAELLTl8i\l. 


BY   THE   AUTHOR 


MODERN     PAINT  EliS 


NEW   YORK: 

JOIIK    WILEY   AND   SONS, 

53  East  Tenth  Stkeet, 

Secoud  door  west  ul'  Broadway. 

1891. 


b^RANCIS    nA\\^KSWORTn    FAWKES,    ESQ 

OF   FARNLKT. 

ail]  CSC    JJagcs, 

WHICH    OWE    THEIR    TRESENT    FORM    TO    ADVANTAGES    GRANTHI 
BY    ITIS    KINDNESS, 

ARE   AFFECTIONATELY    INSCRIBED, 

BY    niS    Olil.IGED    KKIKND, 

JOHN    RUSKLN. 


PEEFACE. 


Eight  years  ago,  in  the  close  of  the  first  volume  of 
"Modern  Painters,"  I  ventured  to  give  the  following 
advice  to  tlie  young  artists  of  England : — 

*'  They  should  go  to  nature  in  all  singleness  of  heart,  and 
walk  with  her  laboriously  and  trustintrly,  having  no  other 
thought  but  how  best  to  penetrate  her  meaninjr;  reject- 
ing nothing,  selecting  nothing,  and  scorning  nothing." 
Advice  which,  whether  bad  or  good,  involved  infinite 
labor  and  humiliation  in  the  following  it ;  and  was  there- 
fore, for  the  most  part,  rejected. 

It  has,  however,  at  last  been  carried  out,  to  the  very 
letter,  by  a  group  of  men  who,  for  their  reward,  have  been 
assailed  with  the  most  scurrilous  abuse  which  I  ever  recol- 
lect seeing  issue  from  the  public  press.  ^  I  have,  therefore, 
thought  it  due  to  them  to  contradict  the  directly  false 
statements  which  have  been  made  res])ccting  their  works  ; 
and  to  point  out  the  kind  of  merit  which,  however  deficient 
iiTsorae  respects^those  woj ks  possess  beyond  the  pdsslhilitv 
of  dispute. 

Den  Ml  ark  Hill, 
Aug.  1801. 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM 


It  may  be  proved,  with  much  certainty,  that  God  intends  no 
man  to  live  in  this  world  Avithout  working :  but  it  seems  to 
me  no  less  evident  that  He  intends  every  man  to  be  happy  in 
his  work.  It  is  written,  "  in  the  sweat  of  thy  broA\',"  but  it 
was  never  written,  "  in  the  breaking  of  thine  heart,"  thou 
shalt  eat  bread  ;  and  I  find  that,  as  on  the  one  hand,  infinite 
misery  is  caused  by  idle  people,  who  both  fail  in  doing  what 
was  appointed  for  them  to  do,  and  set  in  motion  various 
springs  of  mischief  in  matters  in  which  they  should  have  had 
no  concern,  so  on  the  other  hand,  no  small  misery  is  caused 
by  ovei'-worked  and  unhappy  people,  in  the  dark  views  which 
they  necessarily  take  uj)  themselves,  and  force  upon  others,  of 
work  itself  Were  it  not  so,  I  believe  the  fact  of  their  being 
unhappy  is  in  itself  a  violation  of  divine  law,  and  a  sign  of 
some  kind  of  folly  or  sin  in  their  way  of  life.  Now  in  order 
that  people  may  be  happy  in  their  Avork,  these  three  things 
are  needed  :  They  must  be  fit  for  it:  They  must  not  do  too 
much  of  it:  and  they  must  have  a  sense  of  success  in  it — not 
a  doubtful  sense,  such  as  needs  some  testimony  of  other  people 
for  its  contirmation,  but  a  sure  sense,  or  rather  knowledge, 
that  so  much  work  has  Ijcen  done  well,  and  fiiiil fully  done, 
wliatever  the  world  may  say  or  think  about  it.  So  that  in 
onhu"  tliat  a  man  may  be  ha))py,  it  is  necessary  that  he  should 
not  only  be  capable  of  his  work,  but  a  good  judge  of  his 
work. 


H  PEE-RAPII A  ELITISM. 

The  first  thing  then  tliat  he  has  to  do,  if  unhappily  \m 
parents  or  masters  have  not  done  it  for  him,  is  to  find  out 
what  he  is  fit  for.  In  which  inquiry  a  man  may  be  very  safely 
guided  by  his  likings,  if  he  be  not  also  guided  by  his  pride 
People  usually  reason  in  some  such  fashion  as  this ;  "  I  don't 

seem  quite  fit  for  a  head-manager  in  the  firm  of &  Co., 

therefore,  in  all  probability,  I  am  fit  to  be  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer."    Whereas,  they  ought  rather  to  reason  thus  :  "  I 

don't  seem  quite*fit  to  be  head-manager  in  the  firm  of 

&  Co.,  but  I  dare  say  I  might  do  something  in  a  small  green- 
grocery business  ;  I  used  to  be  a  good  judge  of  pease;"  that 
is  to  say,  always  trying  lower  instead  of  trying  higher,  until 
they  find  bottom :  once  well  set  on  the  ground,  a  man  may 
build  up  by  degrees,  safely,  instead  of  disturbing  every  one 
in  his  neighborhood  by  perpetual  catastrophes.  But  this 
kind  of  humility  is  rendered  especially  difiicult  in  these  days, 
by  the  contumely  thrown  on  men  in  humble  emijloyments. 
The  very  removal  of  the  massy  bars  which  once  separated  one 
class  of  society  from  another,  has  rendered  it  tenfold  more 
shameful  in  foolish  people's,  i.  e.  in  most  people's  eyes,  to  re- 
main in  the  lower  grades  of  it,  than  ever  it  was  before.  When 
a  man  born  of  an  artisan  was  looked  upon  as  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent species  of  animal  from  a  man  born  of  a  noble,  it  made 
him  no  more  uncomfortable  or  ashamed  to  remain  that  dif- 
ferent species  of  animal,  than  it  makes  a  horse  ashamed  to  re 
main  a  horse,  and  not  to  become  a  giraffe.  But  now  that  a 
man  may  make  money,  and  rise  in  the  world,  and  associate 
himself,  unre^jroached,  with  people  once  far  above  him,  not 
only  is  the  natural  discontentedness  of  humanity  developed  to 
an  unheard-of  extent,  whatever  a  man's  position,  but  it  be- 
comes a  veritable  shame  to  him  to  remain  in  the  state  he  was 
born  in,  and  everybody  thinks  it  his  duti/  to  try  to  be  a 
*'  gentleman."  Persons  who  have  any  influence  in  the  manage- 
ment of  public  institutions  for  charitable  education  know  how 


PRE-RAPUAELITISM.  9 

iioiiiraon  this  feeling  has  become.  Hardly  a  day  passes  bill 
they  receive  letters  from  mothers  wlio  want  all  their  six  or 
eight  sons  to  go  to  college,  and  make  the  grand  tour  in  the 
long  vacation,  and  who  think  there  is  something  wrong  in  tho 
foundations  of  society,  because  this  is  not  possible.  Out  of 
eveiy  ten  letters  of  this  kind,  nine  will  allege,  as  the  reason 
of  the  writers'  importunity,  their  desire  to  keep  their  families 
in  such  and  such  a  "  station  of  life."  There  is  no  real  desire 
tor  the  safety,  the  discipline,  or  the  moral  good  of  the  children, 
only  a  panic  horror  of  the  inexpressibly  pitiable  calamity  of 
their  living  a  ledge  or  two  lower  on  the  molehill  of  the  world 
— a  calamity  to  be  averted  at  any  cost  Avhatever,  of  struggle, 
anxiety,  and  shortening  of  life  itself  I  do  not  believe  that 
any  greater  good  could  be  achieved  for  the  country,  than  the 
change  in  public  feeling  on  this  head,  which  might  be  brought 
about  by  a  few  benevolent  men,  undeniably  in  the  class  of 
"gentlemen,"  who  would,  on  principle,  enter  into  some  of  our 
conmionest  trades,  and  make  them  honorable  ;  shoAving  that 
it  was  possible  for  a  man  to  retain  his  dignity,  and  remain,  in 
the  best  sense,  a  gentleman,  though  part  of  his  tune  was  every 
day  occupied  in  manual  labor,  or  even  in  serving  customei-a 
over  a  counter.  I  do  not  in  the  least  see  why  courtesy,  and 
gravity,  and  sympathy  with  the  feelings  of  others,  and  courage, 
and  truth,  and  piety,  and  what  else  goes  to  make  up  a  gentle- 
man's character,  should  not  be  found  behind  a  counter  as  well 
as  elsewhere,  if  they  were  demanded,  or  even  hoped  for, 
'here. 

Let  us  sujtpose,  then,  that  the  man's  way  of  life  and  mannei 
of  work  have  been  discreetly  chosen  ;  then  the  next  thing  to 
be  rc<piired  is,  that  he  do  not  over-work  himself  therein.  I 
am  not  going  to  say  anything  here  about  the  various  errors  in 
our  systems  of  society  and  commerce,  wliich  ap]iear  (I  am  not 
sure  if  they  ever  do  more  than  appear )  to  force  us  to  over- 
work ourselves  merely  that  we  may  live ;   nor  about  tlie  stilt 

1* 


10  PRE-RAPIIAELITISIM. 

more  fruitful  cause  of  unhealthy  toil — the  incapahility,  m 
many  men,  of  being  content  witli  the  little  that  is  indeed 
ueccssary  to  their  happiness.  I  have  only  a  word  or  two  to 
Bay  about  one  special  cause  of  over- work — the  ambitious  desire 
of  doing  great  or  clever  things,  and  the  hope  of  accomplishing 
Jicm  by  immense  efforts:  hope  as  vain  as  it  is  pernicious;  not 
only  makmg  men  over-work  themselves,  but  rendering  all  the 
work  they  do  unwholesome  to  them.  I  say  it  is  a  vain  hope, 
and  let  the  reader  be  assured  of  this  (it  is  a  truth  all-import- 
ant to  the  best  interests  of  humanity).  iVb  great  intellectual 
thing  was  ever  done  hy  great  effort ;  a  great  thing  can  only  be 
done  by  a  great  man,  and  he  does  it  icithout  effort.  Nothing 
is,  at  present,  less  understood  by  us  than  this — nothing  is  more 
necessary  to  be  understood.  Let  me  try  to  say  it  as  clearly, 
and  explain  it  as  fully  as  I  may. 

I  have  said  no  great  intellectual  thing  :  for  I  do  not  mean 
the  assertion  to  extend  to  things  moral.  On  the"  contrary,  it 
seems  to  me  that  just  because  we  are  intended,  as  long  as  we 
live,  to  be  in  a  state  of  intense  moral  effort,  we  are  not  in- 
tended to  be  in  intense  physical  or  intellectual  effort.  Our 
full  energies  are  to  be  given  to  the  soul's  work — to  the  great 
fight  with  the  Dragon — the  taking  the  kingdom  of  heaven  by 
force.  But  the  body's  work  and  head's  work  are  to  be  done 
quietly,  and  comparatively  without  effort.  Neither  limbs  nor 
brain  are  ever  to  be  strained  to  their  utmost ;  that  is  not  the 
way  in  which  the  greatest  quantity  of  work  is  to  be  got  out 
of  them :  they  are  never  to  be  worked  furiously,  but  with 
tranquillity  and  constancy.  We  are  to  follow  the  plougli 
from  sunrise  to  sunset,  but  not  to  pull  in  race-boats  at  the 
twilight :  we  shall  get  no  fruit  of  that  kind  of  work,  only 
disease  of  the  heart.- 

How  many  pangs  would  be  spared  to  thousands,  if  this  great 
truth  and  law  were  but  once  sincerely,  humbly  understood, — 
that  if  a  great  thing  can  be  done  at  all,  it  can  be  done  easily,' 


rRE-RAPHAELlTISM.  11 

that,  when  it  is  needed  to  be  done,  there  is  perhaps  only  one 
man  in  the  world  who  can  do  it ;  but  he  can  do  it  without  anji 
trouble — without  more  trouble,  that  is,  than  it  costs  small 
people  to  do  small  things  ;  nay,  perhaps,  with  less.  And  yet 
what  truth  lies  more  o[)enly  on  the  surface  of  all  human  phe- 
nomena ?  Is  not  the  evidence  of  Ease  on  the  very  front  of  all 
the  greatest  works  in  existence  ?  Do  they  not  say  plainly  to 
U3,  not,  "  there  has  been  a  great  effort  here,"  but,  "  there  has 
been  a  great  power  here  "  ?  It  is  not  the  weariness  of  mortality 
but  the  strength  of  divinity,  which  we  have  to  recognise  in 
all  mighty  things  ;  and  that  is  just  what  we  now  never  recog- 
nise, but  think  that  we  are  to  do  great  things,  by  help  of  iron 
bars  and  perspiration  : — alas !  we  shall  do  nothing  that  way 
but  lose  some  ]>ounds  of  our  own  weight. 

Yet,  let«me  not  be  misunderstood,  nor  this  great  truth  bo 
supposed  anywise  resolvable  into  the  iavorite  dogma  of  young 
men,  that  they  need  not  work  if  they  have  genius.  The  fact 
is,  that  a  man  of  genius  is  always  far  more  ready  to  work 
than  other  people,  and  gets  so  much  more  good  from  the  work 
that  he  does,  and  is  often  so  little  conscious  of  the  inherent 
divinity  in  himself,  that  he  is  very  apt  to  ascribe  all  his  capa- 
city to  his  work,  and  to  tell  those  who  ask  how  he  came  to  be 
what  he  is :  "  If  I  am  anything,  which  I  much  doubt,  I  made 
myself  so  "merely  by  labor."  This  was  Newton's  way  of 
talking,  and  I  suj)pose  it  would  be  the  general  tone  of  men 
whose  genius  had  been  devoted  to  the  physical  sciences. 
Genius  in  the  Arts  must  commonly  bo  more  self-conscious,  but 
in  whatever  field,  it  will  always  be  distinguished  by  its  per- 
petual, steady,  Avell-directed,  happy,  and  faithful  labor  in 
accumulating  and  disciplining  its  powers,  as  Avell  as  by  its 
gigantic,  incommunicable  facility  in  exercising  them.  There- 
fore, literally,  it  is  no  man's  business  whether  he  has  genius  or 
not:  woik  he  must,  whatever  he  is,  but  (piictly  and  stt'adily  ; 
and  the  ns^tural  and  unforred  results  of  such  w  ork  will  be  al- 


12  PKE-RAPHAELITISM. 

wjiys  the  things  that  God  meant  him  to  do,  and '  will  be  his 
best.  No  agonies  nor  heart-rendings  will  enable  him  to  do 
any  better.  If  he  be  a  great  man,  they  will  be  great  things  ; 
it"  a  small  man,  small  things  ;  but  ahvays,  if  thus  peacefully 
'lone,  good  and  right;  ahvays,  if  restlessly  and  ambitiously 
done,  false,  hollow,  and  desj)icable. 

Then  the  third  thing  needed  was,  I  said,  that  a  man  should 
he  a  good  judge  of  his  work ;  and  this  chiefly  that  he  may 
not  be  dependent  upon  popular  opinion  for  the  manner  ol 
doing  it,  but  also  that  he  may  have  the  just  encouragement 
of  the  sense  of  progress,  and  an  honest  consciousness  of  vie 
tory  :  how  else  can  he  become 

"  That  awful  independent  on  to-morrow. 
Whose  yesterdays  look  backwards  with  a  smilo." 

I  am  persuaded  that  the  real  nourishment  and  help  of  sixch  a 
feeling  as  this  is  nearly  unknown  to  half  the  worTcmen  of  the 
present  day.  For  whatever  appearance  of  self-complacency 
there  may  be  in  their  outward  bearing,  it  is  visible  enough, 
by  their  feverish  jealousy  of  each  other,  how  little  confidence 
they  have  in  the  stei'Hng  value  of  their  several  doings.  Con- 
ceit may  puff  a  man  up,  but  never  prop  him  up  ;  and  there 
is  too  visible  distress  and  hopelessness  in  men's  aspects  to  ad- 
mit of  the  supposition  that  they  have  any  stable  support  of 
faith  in  themselves. 

I  have  stated  these  principles  generally,  because  there  is  no 
branch  of  labor  to  which  they  do  not  apply  :  But  there  is  one 
in  which  our  ignorance  or  forgetfulness  of  them  has  caused  an 
incalculable  amount  of  suffering  :  and  I  would  endeavor  now 
to  reconsider  them  with  especial  reference  to  it, — the  branch 
of  the  Arts. 

In  general,  the  men  who  are  employed  in  the  Arts  liave 
freely  chosen  their  profession,  and  suppose  themselves  to  have 
special  faculty  for.  it ;  yet,  as  a  body,  they  are  not  happy  men 


PRE-RxVPIIAELlTlSM.  lil 

For  whkli  this  seems  to  me  the  reason,  that  they  are  expected, 
and  themselves  expect,  to  make  their  bread  by  being  clever — 
not  by  steady  or  quiet  work  ;  and  are,  therefore,  for  the  most 
part,  trying  to  be  cle\er,  and  so  Uving  in  an  utterly  false  stat«» 
of  mind  and  action. 

This  is  the  case,  to  the  same  extent,  in  no  other  profession 
or  employment.  A  lawyer  may  indeed  suspect  that,  unless 
he  has  more  wit  than  those  around  him,  he  is  not  likely  to 
advance  in  his  profession  ;  but  he  will  not  be  always  thinking 
how  he  is  to  display  his  wit.  He  will  generally  understand, 
early  in  his  career,  that  wit  must  be  left  to  take  care  of  itself, 
and  that  it  is  hard  knowledge  of  law  and  vigorous  examination 
and  collation  of  the  facts  of  every  case  entrusted  to  him,  which 
his  clients  will  mainly  demand  :  this  it  is  which  he  has  to  be 
paid  for  ;  and  this  is  healthy  and  measurable  labor,  payable 
by  the  hour.  If  he  happen  to  have  keen  natural  perception 
and  quick  wit,  these  will  come  into  play  in  their  due  time  and 
place,  but  he  will  not  think  of  them  as  his  chief  power ;  and 
if  he  have  them  not,  he  may  still  hope  that  industry  and  con- 
scientiousness may  enable  him  to  rise  in  his  profession  without 
them.  Again  in  the  case  of  clergymen  :  that  they  are  sorely 
temjitcd  to  display  their  eloquence  or  wit,  none  who  know 
their  own  hearts  will  deny,  but  then  they  know  this  to  be  a 
temptation  :  they  never  would  suppose  that  cleverness  was  all 
that  was  to  be  expected  from  them,  or  would  sit  down  deli- 
berately to  write  a  clever  sermon  :  even  the  dullest  or  Aainest 
of  tlicni  would  throw  some  veil  over  their  vanity,  and  ])ietend 
to  some  profitableness  of  ])uri)Ose  in  what  they  did.  They 
would  not  openly  ask  of  their  hearers — Did  you  think  my 
sermon  ingenious,  or  my  language  poetical  ?  They  would 
early  understand  that  they  were  not  l)aid  for  being  ingenious, 
nor  called  to  be  so,  but  to  preach  truth  ;  that  if  they  happened 
to  possess  wit,  eloquence,  or  originality,  these  would  appear 
and  be  of  service  in  due  time,  l)ut  were  not  to  bo  continualij 


14  PRE-irAPlI  A  ELITISM. 

sought  after  or  exhibited:  and  if  it  should  happen  that  they 
liad  them  not,  they  might  still  be  serviceable  pastors  without 
them. 

Not  so  with  the  unhappy  artist.  No  one  expects  any  honest 
or  useful  work  of  him ;  but  every  one  expects  him  to  be 
ingenious.  Originality,  dexterity,  invention,  imagination,  cveiy 
thing  is  asked  of  him  except  what  alone  is  to  be  had  for  asking 
— honesty  and  sound  work,  and  the  due  discharge  of  his 
function  as  a  painter.  What  function  ?  asks  the  reader  in 
some  surprise.  He  may  well  ask  ;  for  I  suppose  few  painters 
have  any  idea  what  their  function  is,  or  even  that  they  have 
any  at  all. 

And  yet  surely  it  is  not  so  difficult  to  discover.  The  facul- 
ties, which  when  a  man  finds  in  himself,  he  resolves  to  be  a 
painter,  are,  I  suppose,  intenseness  of  observation  and  facility 
of  imitation.  The  man  is  created  an  observer  and  an  imitator  ; 
and  his  function  is  to  convey  knowledge  to  his  fellow-men,  of 
such  things  as  cannot  be  taught  otherwise  than  ocularly.  For 
a  long  time  this  fvmction  remained  a  religious  one :  it  was 
to  impress  upon  the  popular  mind  the  reality  of  the  objects  of 
faith,  and  the  truth  of  the  histories  of  Scripture,  by  giving 
visible  form  to  both.  That  function  has  now  passed  away,  and 
none  has  as  yet  taken  its  place.  The  painter  has  no  profession, 
no  purpose.  He  is  an  idler  on  the  earth,  chasing  the  shadows 
of  his  own  fancies. 

But  he  was  never  meant  to  be  this.  The  sudden  and  uni- 
versal Naturalism,  or  inclination  to  copy  ordinary  natural 
objects,  which  manifested  itself  among  the  painters  of  Europe, 
It  the  moment  when  the  invention  of  ])rinting  superseded 
their  legendary  labors,  was  no  false  instinct.  It  was  mis-' 
understood  and  misap))lied,  but  it  came  at  the  right  time,  and 
has  maintained  itself  through  all  kinds  of  abuse ;  presenting 
in  the  recent  schools  of  landscape,  perhaps  only  the  first  fruits 
of  its  power.      That  instinct  was  urging  every   painter   m 


niE-RiVrllAELlTISM.  15 

Europe  at  the  same  inouieiit  to  his  true  dnty^the  faithfm 
representation  of  all  objects  of  historical  interest,  or  of  natu 
ral  beauty  existent  at  the  period;  representations  such  as  might 
;it  once  aid  the  advance  of  the  sciences,  and  keep  foithful  re- 
cord of  everymoiiunient  of  past  ages  wliich  was  likely  to  be 
swept  away  in  the  approaching  eras  of  revolutionary  change. 
The  instinct  came,  as  I  said,  exactly  at  the  right  moment ; 
and  let  tlie  reader  consider  what  amount  and  kind  of  general 
knowledge  might  by  this  time  have  been  possessed  by  the 
nations  of  Europe,  had  their  painters  understood  and  obeyed 
it.  Suppose  that,  after  disciplining  themselves  so  as  to  be 
able  to  draw,  with  unerring  precision,  each  the  particular  kind 
of  subject  in  which  he  most  delighted,  they  had  separated  into 
two  great  armies  of  historians  and  naturalists; — that  the  first 
had  painted  with  absolute  faithfulness  every  edifice,  every 
city,  every  battle-field,  every  scene  of  the  slightest  historical 
interest,  precisely  and  completely  rendering  their  aspect  at 
the  time ;  and  that  their  companions,  according  to  their  seve- 
ral powers,  had  painted  with  like  fidelity  the  plants  and 
animals,  the  natural  scenery,  and  the  atmospheric  phenomena 
of  every  country  on  the  earth — suppose  that  a  faithful  and 
complete  record  were  now  in  oui-  museums  of  every  building 
destroyed  by  war,  or  time,  or  innovation,  during  these  last 
200  years — suppose  that  each  recess  of  every  mountain  chain 
of  Europe  had  been  penetrated,  and  its  rocks  drawn  with  such 
accuracy  that  the  geologist's  diagram  was  no  longer  neces- 
sary— suppose  that  every  tree  of  the  forest  had  been  drawn 
in  its  noblest  aspect,  every  beast  of  the  field  in  its  savage 
life — that  all  these  gatherings  were  already  in  our  national 
♦gMlleries,  and  that  the  painters  of  the  present  day  were  labor- 
ing, happily  and  earnestly,  to  multiply  them,  and  put  such 
means  of  knowledge  more  and  more  within  reach  of  the  com- 
mon people — would  not  that  be  a  more  honoiable  life  foi 
tliem,  than   gaining   precarious  bread   by  "bright  eftocts  ? 


IG  rKE-RAPUAELITIS^r. 

Tiiey  tliinTv  not,  perhaps.  They  think  it  easy,  and  therefore 
contemptible,  to  be  truthful ;  they  have  been  taught  so  all 
their  lives.  But  it  is  not  so,  whoever  taught  it  them.  It  i« 
most  difficult,  and  worthy  of  the  greatest  men's  greatest  eifort, 
to  render,  as  it  should  be  rendered,  the  simplest  of  the  natural 
features  of  the  earth ;  but  also  be  it  remembered,  no  man  is 
confined  to  the  simplest ;  each  may  look  out  Avork  for  himsell 
where  he  chooses,  and  it  will  be  strange  if  he  cannot  find 
something  hard  enough  for  him.  The  excuse  is,  however,  one 
of  the  lips  only ;  for  every  painter  knows  that  Avhen  he  draws 
back  from  the  attempt  to  render  nature  as  she  is,  it  is  oftener 
in  cowardice  than  in  disdain. 

I  must  leave  the  reader  to  pui-sue  this  subject  for  himself; 
I  have  not  space  to  suggest  to  him  the  tenth  part  of  the 
advantages  which  would  follow,  both  to  the  painter  from  such 
an  understanding  of  his  mission,  and  to  the  whole  people,  in 
the  results  of  his  labor.  Consider  hoAV  the  man  himself 
would  be  elevated :  how  content  he  would  become,  how 
earnest,  how  full  of  all  accurate  and  noble  knowledge,  how 
free  from  envy — knowing  creation  to  be  infinite,  feeling  at 
once  the  value  of  what  he  did,  and  yet  the  nothingness.  Con- 
sider the  advantage  to  the  people ;  the  immeasurably  larger 
interest  given  to  art  itself;  the  easy,  pleasurable,  and  perfect 
knowledge  conveyed  by  it,  in  every  subject ;  the  fiir  greater 
number  of  men  Avho  might  be  healthily  and  profitably  occu- 
pied with  it  as  a  means  of  livelihood ;  the  useful  direction 
of  myriads  of  inferior  talents,  now  left  fading  away  in  misery. 
Conceive  all  this,  and  then  look  around  at  our  exhibitions, 
and  behold  the  "  cattle  pieces,"  and  "  sea  pieces,"  and  "  fruit 
pieces,"  and  "fmiily  pieces;"  the  eternal  brown  cows  in* 
ditches,  and  white  sails  in  squalls,  and  sliced  lemons  in  saucers, 
and  foolish  faces  in  simpers ; — and  try  to  feel  what  we  ai'e, 
and  what  we  might  have  been. 

Take  a  single  instance  in  one  branch  of  arcliaiology.      Let 


I'UK-KAi'lIAKI.ITIHM.  1  < 

those  wlio  are  interested  in  the  liistory  of  religion  considei 
what  a  treasure  we  should  now  have  possessed,  if,  mstead 
of  painting  }Jots,  and  vegetables,  and  drunken  peasantry,  the 
most  accurate  painters  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies had  been  set  to  copy,  line  for  line,  the  religious  and 
domestic  sculpture  on  the  German,  Flemish,  and  French 
cathedrals  and  castles ;  and  if  every  building  destroyed  in  the 
French  or  in  any  other  subsequent  revolution,  had  thus  been 
drawn  in  all  its  parts  with  the  same  precision  with  which 
Gerard  Douw  or  Mieris  paint  basreliefs  of  Cupids,  Consider, 
even  now,  what  mcalculable  treasure  is  still  left  in  ancient 
basreliefs,  full  of  every  kind  of  legendary  interest,  of  subtle 
expression,  of  priceless  evidence  as  to  the  character,  feelings, 
habits,  histories,  of  past  generations,  in  neglected  and  shattered 
churches  and  domestic  buildings,  I'apidly  disappearing  ovei 
the  whole  of  Europe — treasure  which,  once  lost,  the  labor 
of  all  men  living  cannot  bring  back  again ;  and  then  look  at 
tiie  myriads  of  men,  with  skill  enough,  if  they  had  but  the 
commonest  schooling,  to  record  all  this  faithfully,  who  are 
making  their  bread  by  drawing  dances  of  naked  women  from 
academy  models,  or  idealities  of  chivalry  fitted  out  with 
Wardour  Street  armor,  or  eternal  scenes  from  Gil  Bias,  Don 
Quixote,  and  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  or  mountain  sceneries 
with  young  idiots  of  Londoners  wearing  Highland  bonnets 
and  brandishing  rifles  in  the  foregrounds.  Do  but  think 
of  these  things  in  the  breadtli  of  their  iuexi>ressible  imbecility, 
and  then  go  and  stand  before  that  broken  basrelief  in  the 
southern  gate  of  Lincoln  Cathedral,  and  see  if  there  is  no  fibre 
of  the  heart  in  you  that  will  break  too. 

But  is  there  to  be  no  place  left,  it  will  be  indignantly  asked, 
for  hnagination  and  invention,  for  poetical  i)Ower,  or  love 
of  ideal  beauty?  Yes;  the  highest,  the  noblest  place — that 
which  these  only  can  attain  when  they  are  all  used  in  the 
cause,  and  witli  the  aid  of  truth.     Wherever  imagination  and 


Iri  PllE-KAPUAELITISM. 

sentiment  are,  they  will  either  show  themselves  without  foio 
iiig,  or,  if  capable  of  artiiicial  develojiment,  the  kind  of  train 
ing  which  such  a  school  of  art  would  give  them  m  ould  be  the 
best  they  could  receive.     The  infinite  absurdity  and  failure 
of  our  present  training  consists  mainly  in  this,  that  we  do  not 
rank  imagination  and  invention  high  enough,  and  suppose  that 
iliey  can  be  taught.     Throughout  every  sentence  that  I  ever 
liave  written,  the  reader  will  find  the  same  rank  attributed  to 
these  powers, — the  rank  of  a  purely  divine  gift,  not  to  be 
attained,  increased,  or  in  any  wise  modified  by  teaching,  only  in 
various  ways  capable  of  being  concealed  or  quenched.  Under- 
stand this  thoroughly ;  know  once  for  all,  that  a  poet  on  canvas 
is  exactly  the  same  species  of  creature  as  a  poet  in  song,  and 
nearly  every  error  in   our  methods  of  teaching  will  be  done 
away  with.      For  who  among  us  now  thinks  of  bringing  men 
up  to  be  poets? — of  ^^roduciug  poets  by  any  kind  of  general 
recipe  or  method  of  cultivation  ?     Suppose  even  that  we  see 
in  youth  that  which  we  hope  may,  in  its  development,  become 
a  power  of  this  kind,  should  we  instantly,  supposing  that  we 
wanted  to  make  a  poet  of  him,  and  nothing  else,  forbid  him 
all  quiet,  steady,  rational  labor?     Should  we  force  him  to 
perpetual  spinning  of  new  crudities  out  of  his  boyish  brain, 
and  set  before  him,  as  the  only  objects  of  his  study,  the  laws 
of  versification  which  criticism  has  supposed  itself  to  discover 
in  the  works  of  previous  writers?     Wliatever  gifts  the  boy 
had,  would   much   be  likely  to  come   of  them   so  treated? 
luiless,  indeed,  they  were  so  great  as  to  break  through  all 
such  snares  of  falsehood  and  vanity, 'and  build  their  own  foun- 
dation in  spite  of  us  ;  whereas  if,  as  in  cases  numbering  millione 
against  units,  the  natural  gifts  were  too  weak  to  do  this,  could 
any  thing  come  of  such  training  but  utter  inanity  and  spuri- 
ousness  of  the  whole  num  ?     But  if  we  had  sense,  should  we 
not  rather  restrain  and  bridle  the  first  flame  of  invention  in 
early  youth,  heaping  material  on  it  as  one  would  on  the  first 


PRE-RAPIIAELITISM,  19 

sparks  and  tongues  of  a  fire  which  we  desired  to  I'eed  into 
greatness?  Should  we  not  educate  the  whole  intellect  into 
general  strength,  and  all  the  affections  into  warmth  and 
honesty,  and  look  to  heaven  for  the  rest?  This,  I  say,  wf 
should  liave  sense  enough  to  do,  in  order  to  produce  a  poet 
in  words :  but,  it  being  required  to  produce  a  poet  on  canvas, 
what  is  our  way  of  setting  to  work?  We  begin,  hi  all  proba- 
bility, by  telling  the  youth  of  fifteen  or  sixteen,  that  Nature 
is  full  of  faults,  and  that  he  is  to  improve  her;  but  that 
Raphael  is  i)erfection,  and  that  the  more  he  copies  Kaphael 
the  better ;  that  after  much  copying  of  Raphael,  he  is  to  try 
what  he  can  do  himself  in  a  Raphaelesque,  but  yet  original, 
manner  :  that  is  to  say,  he  is  to  try  to  do  something  very 
<;lever,  all  out  of  his  own  head,  but  yet  this  clever  something 
is  to  be  properly  subjected  to  Raphaelesque  rules,  is  to  have 
a  principal  light  occupying  one-seventh  of  its  space,  and  a 
l)rincipal  shadow  occupying  one-third  of  the  same ;  that  no 
two  people's  heads  in  the  picture  are  to  be  turned  the  same 
way,  and  that  all  the  personages  represented  are  to  possess 
ideal  beauty  of  the  highest  order,  which  ideal  beauty  consists 
partly  in  a  Greek  outline  of  nose,  partly  in  proportions  ex 
pressible  in  decimal  fractions  between  the  lips  and  chin ;  but 
partly  also  in  that  degree  of  improvement  which  the  youth 
of  sixteen  is  to  bestow  u|)on  God's  work  in  general.  This  I 
say  is  the  kind  of  teaching  which  through  various  channels, 
Royal  Academy  leclurings,  press  criticisms,  public  enthusiasm 
and  not  least  by  solid  weight  of  gold,  we  give  to  our  young 
men.     And  we  wonder  we  have  no  painters! 

But  we  do  worse  than  this.  Within  the  last  few  years  some 
sense  of  the  real  tendency  of  such  teaching  has  appeared  in 
some  of  our  younger  painters.  It  only  could  appear  in  the 
younger  ones,  our  older  men  having  become  familiaiised  with 
the  false  system,  or  else  having  passed  through  it  and  forgotten 
it,  not  well  knowing  the  degree  of  harm  they  had  sustained 


■20  PUK-nAPilAELlTlSM. 

This  sense  appeared,  among  our  youths, — increased, — matured 
into  resolute  action.    Necessarily,  to  exist  at  all,  it  needed  the 
support   both    of  strong   instincts  and  of  considerable  self 
confidence,  otherwise  it  must  at  once  have  been  borne  down 
by  the  weight  of  general  authority  and  received  canon  law. 
Strong  instincts  are  apt  to  make  men  strange,  and  rude ;  self- 
^nfidcnce,  however  well  founded,  to  give  much  of  what  they 
io  or  say  the  appearance  of  impertinence.     Look  at  the  self- 
confidence  of  Wordsworth,  stiffening  every  other  sentence  of 
his  prefaces  into  defiance ;  there  is  no  more  of  it  than  was 
needed  to  enable  him  to  do  his  work,  yet  it  is  not  a  little  un 
graceful  here  and  there.     Suppose  this  stubbornness  and  self 
trust  in  a  youth,  laboring  in  an  art  of  which  the  executive 
pai't  is  confessedly  to  be  best  learnt  from  masters,  and  we 
shall  hardly  wonder  that  much  of  his  woi-k  has  a  certain 
awkwardness  and  stiffness  in  it,  or  tliat  he  should  be  regarded 
with   disfavor  by  many,   even    the    most  temperate,  of  the 
judges  trained  in  the  system  he  was  breaking  through,  and 
with  utter  contempt  and  reprobation  by  the  envious  and  the 
dull.     Consider,  farther,  that  the  particular  system  to  be  over 
thi'own  was,  in  the  present  case,  one  of  which  the  main  cha- 
racteristic was  the  pursuit  of  beauty  at  the  expense  of  man- 
liness and  truth  ;    and  it  will  seem  likely,   d  p)'iori,  that  the 
men  intended  successfully  to  resist  the  influence  of  such  a 
system  should  be  endowed  with  little  natural  sense  of  beauty, 
and  thus  rendered  dead  to  the  temptation  it  presented.    Sum- 
nihig  up  these  conditions,  there  is  surely  little  cause  for  surprise 
that  pictures  painted,  in  a  temper  of  resistance,  by  exceed- 
ingly young  men,  of  stubborn  instincts  and  positive  self-trust, 
and   with  little  natural  perception  of  beauty,  should  not  be 
calculated,  at  the  first  glance,  to  win  us  from  works  enriched 
by  plagiarism,  polished  by  convention,  invested  with  all  the 
attractiveness  of  artificial  grace,  and  recommended  to  oai 
respect  by  established  authority. 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM.  21 

We  should,  liowever,  on  the  other  hand,  have  anticipated, 
that  in  proportion  to  the  strength  of  character  required  foi 
tlie  effort,  and  to  the  absence  of  distracting  sentinient.<=!,  wliethei 
respect  for  precedent,  or  affection  for  ideal  beauty,  would  bf 
the  energy  exhibited  in  the  pursuit  of  the  special  objects  which 
the  youths  proposed  to  themselves,  and  their  success  in  attain- 
ing them. 

All  this  has  actually  been  the  case,  but  in  a  degree  which  it 
would  have  been  impossible  to  anticipate.  That  two  youths, 
of  the  respective  ages  of  eighteen  and  twenty,  should  have 
conceived  for  themselves  a  totally  independent  and  sinceie 
method  of  study,  and  enthusiastically  persevered  in  it  against 
every  kind  of  dissuasion  and  opposition,  is  strange  enough  ; 
that  in  the  third  or  fourth  year  of  their  efforts  they  should 
have  produced  works  in  many  parts  not  inferior  to  the  best 
of  Albert  Durer,  this  is  perhaps  not  less  strange.  But  the 
loudness  and  universality  of  the  howl  which  the  common 
critics  of  the  press  have  raised  against  them,  the  utter  ab- 
sence of  all  generous  help  or  encouragement  from  those  who 
can  both  measure  their  toil  and  appreciate  their  success,  and 
the  shrill,  sliallow  laughter  of  those  who  can  do  neither  the 
one  nor  the  otlier, — these  are  strangest  of  all — unimaginable 
unless  they  had  been  experienced. 

And  as  if  these  were  not  enough,  private  malice  is  at  work 
against  them,  in  its  own  small,  slimy  way.  The  very  day  afler 
I  had  written  my  second  letter  to  the  Times  in  the  defence  of 
the  Pre-llaphaelites,  I  received  an  anonymous  letter  respecting 
one  of  them,  from  some  person  apparently  hardly  capable  of 
Bf)elling,  and  about  as  vile  a  specimen  of  petty  malignity  as 
ever  blotted  paper.  I  think  it  well  that  the  public  should 
know  this,  and  so  get  some  insight  into  the  sources  of  the 
spirit  which  is  at  work  against  these  men — how  first  roused  it 
is  difficult  to  say,  for  one  would  hardly  have  thought  that 
mere  eccenti  icity  in  young  artists  could  have  excited  an  hoij 


22  ^       PKE-KAPIIAELITISM. 

tility  so  determined  and  so  cruel ; — hostility  which  hesitated 
at  no  asseition,  however  impudent.  That  of  the  "absence  of 
perspective  "  was  one  of  the  most  curious  pieces  of  the  hue 
and  cry  wliich  began  with  the  Times,  and  died  away  in  feeble 
maundering  in  the  Art  Union ;  I  contradicted  it  in  the 
Tinvos — I  here  contradict  it  directly  for  the  second  time. 
There  was  not  a  single  error  in  perspective  in  three  out  of  the 
four  pictures  in  question.  But  if  otherwise,  would  it  have 
been  any  thing  remarkable  in  them  ?  I  doubt,  if  with  tlie 
exception  of  the  pictures  of  David  Roberts,  there  were  one 
ai-chitectural  drawing  in  perspective  on  the  walls  of  the 
Academy  ;  I  never  met  but  with  two  men  in  my  life  who  knew 
enough  of  perspective  to  draw  a  Gothic  arch  in  a  retiring 
plane,  so  that  its  lateral  dimensions  and  curvatures  might  be 
calculated  to  scale  from  the  drawing.  Our  architects  certainly 
do  not,  and  it  was  but  the  other  day  that,  talking  to  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  among  them,  the  author  of  several 
most  valuable  works,  I  found  he  actually  did  not  know  how  to 
draw  a  circle  in  perspective.  And  in  this  state  of  general 
science  our  writers  for  the  press  take  it  upon  them  to  tell  us, 
that  the  forest  trees  in  Mr.  Hunt's  Sylvia^  and  the  bunches 
of  Ulies  in  Mr.  Collins's  Convent  Thoughts^  are  out  of  per- 
sjjective.* 

It  might  not,  I  think,  in  such  circumstances,  have  been  un- 

*  It  was  not  a  little  curious,  that  in  the  very  number  of  the  Art  Union 
which  repeated  this  direct  falsehood  about  the  Pre-Raphaelite  rejection  of 
"  linear  perspective "  (by-the-bye,  the  next  time  J.  B.  takes  upon  hirn  to 
sjjcak  of  any  one  connected  with  the  Universities,  he  may  as  well  first 
ascertain  the  difference  between  a  Graduate  and  an  Under-Graduate),  the 
second  plate  given  should  have  been  of  a  picture  of  Bonington's, — a  profes- 
sional landscape  painter,  observe,— for  the  want  of  ae-ial  perspective  in  which 
the  Art  Union  itself  was  obliged  to  apologise,  and  in  which  tlie  artist  has 
committed  nearly  as  many  blunders  in  linear  perspective  as  there  are  linea  u 
the  picture. 


PRE-R.*  PH  A  ELITISM.  23 

gr.-iccfwl  or  unwise  in  tlic  Acadeinicians  themselves  to  have 
defended  thoiv  young  impils,  at  least  by  the  contradiction  of 
statements  directly  false  respecting  them,  *  and  the  direction 
of  the  mind  and  sight  of  the  public  to  such  real  merit  as  they 
possess.  If  Sir  Charles  Eastlake,  Mulready,  Edwin  and 
Cliarles  Landseer,  Cope,  and  Dyce  would  each  of  them  simjily 

*  These  false  statements  may  bo  reduced  to  three  prhicipai   neads,  and 
directly  contradicted  in  succession. 

The  first,  the  current  fallacy  of  society  as  well  as  of  the  press  was,  that 
the  Pre-Raphaelites  imitated  the  errom  of  early  painters. 

A  falsehood  of  this  kind  could  not  have  obtained  credence  any  where  but 
in  England,  few  English  people,  comparatively,  having  ever  seen  a  picture 
of  early  Italian  Masters.  If  they  had,  they  would  have  known  that  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite  pictures  are  just  as  superior  to  the  early  Italian  in  skill  of  mani- 
pulation, power  of  drawing,  and  knowledge  of  effect,  as  inferior  to  them  in 
grace  of  design  ;  and  that  in  a  word,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  resemblance 
between  the  two  styles.  The  Pre-Raphaelites  imitate  no  pictures :  they  paint 
from  nature  only.  But  they  have  opposed  themselves  as  a  body,  to  that  kind 
of  teaching  above  described,  which  only  began  alter  Raphael's  time :  and 
they  have  opposed  themselves  as  sternly  to  the  entire  feeling  of  the  Renais- 
sance schools;  a  feeling  compounded  of  indolence,  infidelity,  sensuality,  and 
shallow  pride.  Therefore  they  have  called  themselves  Pre-Raphaelite.  If 
they  adhere  to  their  principles,  and  paint  nature  as  it  is  around  them,  with 
the  help  of  modern  science,  with  the  earnestness  of  the  men  of  the  thirteenth 
and  fourteenth  centuries,  they  will,  as  I  said,  found  a  new  and  noble  school 
in  England  If  their  sympathies  with  the  early  artists,  lead  thera  into 
medisevalism  or  Romanism,  they  will  of  course  come  to  nothing.  But  I  believe 
there  is  no  danger  of  this,  at  least  for  the  strongest  among  them.  There  may 
be  some  weak  ones,  whom  the  Tractarian  heresies  may  touch ;  but  if  so,  they 
will  drop  off  like  decayed  branches  from  a  strong  stem.  I  hope  all  thinga 
from  the  school. 

The  second  falsehood  wa.s,  that  the  Pre-Raphhelites  did  not  draw  well 
riis  was  a.sscrted,  and  could  have  been  asserted  only  by  persotis  who  had 
never  looked  at  the  pictures. 

The  third  falsehood  wjvs,  that  they  had  no  system  of  light  and  shade.  To 
which  it  may  be  simply  replied  that  their  sy.stera  of  light  and  shade  is  exactly 
the  B&me  a.s  tlie  Sun's ;  which  is,  I  believe,  likely  to  outlast  that  of  the  Renain 
sance,  however  brilliant. 


24  PRE-RAniAELITISM. 

Htate  tlicir  own  private  opinion  respecting  their  paintings,  sign 
it,  and  publish  it,  I  believe  the  act  would  be  of  more  service 
to  English  art  than  any  thing  the  Academy  has  lone  since  it 
was  founded.  But  as  I  cannot  hope  for  this,  I  can  only  ask 
the  public  to  give  their  pictures  careful  examination,  and  look 
It  them  at  once  with  the  indulgence  and  the  respect  Avhich  1 
have  endeavored  to  show  they  deserve. 

Yet  let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  have  adduced  them 
only  as  examples  of  the  kind  of  study  which  I  would  desii-e 
to  see  substituted  for  thaX  of  our  modern  schools,  and  of 
singular  success  in  certain  characters,  finish  of  detail,  and  bril 
liancy  of  color.  What  faculties,  higher  than  imitative,  may 
1)6  in  these  men,  I  do  not  yet  venture  to  say  ;  but  I  do  say, 
that  if  they  exist,  such  faculties  will  manifest  themselves  in 
due  time  all  the  more  forcibly  because  they  have  received 
training  so  severe. 

For  it  is  always  to  be  remembered  that  no  one  mind  is  like 
another,  either  in  its  powers  or  perceptions  ;  and  while  the 
main  piinciples  of  training  must  be  the  same  for  all,  the  result 
in  each  will  be  as  various  as  the  kinds  of  truth  which  each  will 
apprehend  ;  therefore,  also,  the  modes  of  effort,  even  in  men 
whose  inner  principles  and  final  aims  are  exactly  the  same. 
Suppose,  for  instance,  two  men,  equally  honest,  equally  indus- 
trious, equally  impressed  with  a  humble  desire  to  render  some 
part  of  what  they  saw  in  nature  faithfully  ;  and,  otherwise, 
trained  in  convictions  such  as  I  have  above  endeavored  to 
induce.  But  one  of  them  is  quiet  iji  temperament,  has  a  feeble 
memory,  no  invention,  and  excessively  keen  sight.  The  othei 
's  impatient  in  temperament,  has  a  memory  which  nothino 
escapes,  an  invention  which  never  rests,  and  is  comparatively 
near-sighted. 

Set  tliem  both  free  in  the  same  field  in  a  mountain  valley. 
One  sees  everything,  small  and  large,  with  almost  the  same 
clearness ;  mountains  and  grasshoppers  aMke ;  the  leaves  on 


PRE-EAPHAELITI8M  28 

the  brandies,  tlie  veins  in  the  pebbles,  the  bubbles  in  the 
stream :  but  he  can  remember  nothing,  and  invent  nothing. 
Patiently  he  sets  himself  to  his  mighty  task ;  abandoning  at 
once  all  thoughts  of  seizing  transient  effects,  or  giving  general 
impressions  of  that  which  his  eyes  present  to  hira  in  micro- 
scopical dissection,  lie  chooses  some  small  portion  out  of  the 
Ujfinite  scene,  and  calculates  with  courage  the  number  of 
weeks  which  must  elapse  before  he  can  do  justice  to  the 
intensity  of  his  perceptions,  or  the  fulness  of  matter  in  hia 
subject. 

Meantime,  the  other  has  been  watching  the  change  of  the 
clouds,  and  the  march  of  the  light  along  the  mountain  sides  ; 
be  beholds  the  entire  scene  in  broad,  soft  masses  of  true  gra- 
dation, and  the  very  feebleness  of  his  sight  is  in  some  sort  an 
advantage  to  him,  in  making  him  more  sensible  of  the  aerial 
mystery  of  distance,  and  hiding  from  him  the  multitudes  of 
circumstances  which  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  him 
to  represent.  But  there  is  not  one  change  in  the  casting  of 
the  jagged  shadows  along  the  hollows  of  the  hills,  but  it  is 
fixed  on  his  mind  for  ever ;  not  a  flake  of  spray  has  broken 
from  the  sea  of  cloud  about  their  bases,  but  he  has  watched 
it  as  it  melts  away,  and  could  recall  it  to  its  lost  place  in 
heaven  by  the  slightest  effort  of  his  thoughts.  Not  only  so, 
but  thousands  and  thousands  of  such  images,  of  older  scenes, 
remain  congregated  in  his  mind,  each  nungling  in  new  asso- 
ciations with  those  now  visibly  passing  before  him,  and  these 
again  confused  with  other  iniages  of  his  own  ceaseless,  sleep- 
less imagination.  Hashing  by  in  sudden  troops.  Fancy  how 
his  paper  will  be  covered  with  stray  symbols  and  blots,  and 
mdeciiiiierable  short-hand: — as  for  his  sitting  down  to  "draw 
from  Nature,"  there  was  not  one  of  the  things  which  he  wished 
to  represent  that  stayed  for  so  much  as  five  seconds  together : 
but  none  of  them  escaped,  for  all  that :  they  are  sealed  up  in 
that  strange  storehouse  of  his ;  he  may  take  one  of  them  out^ 

2 


26  PltK-IIAlMl  A  ELITISM. 

perha])s,  this  day  t\\  enty  years,  and  paint  it  in  his  dark  room, 
far  away.  Now,  observe,  you  may  tell  both  of  these  men, 
wlien  they  are  young,  that  they  are  to  be  honest,  that  they 
ha^'e  an  important  function,  and  that  they  are  not  to  cart' 
what  Raphael  did.  This  you  may  wholesomely  impress  on 
them  both.  But  fancy  the  exquisite  absurdity  of  expecting 
either  of  them  to  possess  any  of  the  qualities  of  the  other. 

I  have  supposed  the  feebleness  of  sight  in  the  last,  and  of 
invention  in  the  first  painter,  that  the  contrast  between  them 
might  be  more  striking  ;  but,  with  very  slight  modification, 
both  the  characters  are  real.  Grant  to  the  first  considerable 
inventive  power,  with  exquisite  sense  of  color ;  and  give  to 
the  second,  in  addition  to  all  his  other  faculties,  the  eye  of  an 
eagle ;  and  the  first  is  John  Everett  Millais,  the  second 
Joseph  Mallard  William  Turner. 

They  are  among  the  few  men  who  have  defied  all  false 
teaching,  and  have,  therefore,  in  great  measure,  done  justice 
to  the  gifts  with  which  they  were  intrusted.  They  stand  at 
ojjposite  poles,  marking  culminating  points  of  art  in  both 
directions ;  between  them,  or  in  various  relations  to  them,  we 
may  class  five  or  six  more  living  ai'tists  who,  in  like  manner, 
have  done  justice  to  their  powers.  I  trust  that  I  may  be 
pardoned  for  naming  them,  in  order  that  the  reader  may 
know  how  the  strong  innate  genius  in  each  has  been  inva- 
riably accumj)anied  with  the  same  humility,  earnestness,  and 
industry  in  stndy.  » 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  pohit  ont  the  earnestness  or  humi- 
lity in  the  wurks  of  William  Hunt ;  but  it  may  be  so  to  sug- 
gest the  high  value  they  possess  as  records  of  English  rural 
life,  and  still  life.  Who  is  there  who  fur  a  moment  could 
contend  with  him  in  the  unaffected,  yet  humorous  truth  with 
which  he  has  painted  our  peasant  '-hildren  ?  Who  is  there 
who  does  not  sym|»athize  with  him  in  the  simple  love  witt 
vi'iich  he  dwells  on  ilie  brightness  and  bloom  of  our  summer 


PRE-KAl'llAIiLlTISM.  27 

fruit  and  flowers  ?  And  yet  there  is  suiiietliing  to  be  regretted 
coucerniiig  him;  why  should  he  be  allowed  coiitimially  to 
paiut  tlis  same  bundles  of  hol-house  grapes,  and  £Uj)plv  tc 
tiie  WatfcY  Color  Society  a  succession  of  pineapples  with  thcs 
regularity  of  a  Covent  Garden  fruiterer  'i  He  has  of  late 
discovered  that  [)i'imrose  banks  are  lovely;  but  there  ai'C 
other  things  grow  wild  besides  primroses:  what  undreamt-of 
loveliness  might  he  not  bring  back  to  us,  if  he  would  lose 
himself  for  a  summer  in  Highland  foregrounds  ;  if  he  would 
paint  the  heather  as  it  grows,  and  the  foxglove  and  the  hare 
bell  as  they  nestle  in  the  clefts  of  the  rocks,  and  the  mosses 
and  bright  lichens  of  the  vocks  themselves.  And  then,  cross 
to  the  ,Iui"a,  and  bring  back  a  piece  of  Jura  pasture  in  spring; 
with  the  gentians  in  their  earliest  blue,  and  a  soldanelk- 
beside  the  lading  snow  !  And  return  again,  and  paint  a  gray 
wall  of  alpine  crag,  Avith  budding  roses  crowning  it  like  a 
wreath  cf  rubies.  That  is  what  he  was  meant  to  do  in  tiiis 
world ;  not  to  paint  bouquets  in  china  vases. 

I  have  in  various  other  i)laces  expressed  my  sincere  respect 
for  the  works  of  Samuel  Front :  his  shortness  of  sight  has 
necessarily  prevented  their  ])0ssessing  delicacy  of  finish  or 
fulness  of  minor  detail ;  but  I  tliiuk  that  those  of  no  other 
living  ai-ti>t  furnish  an  example  so  striking  of  innate  and 
special  instinct,  sent  to  do  a  particular  work  at  the  exact  and 
only  period  when  it  was  possible.  At  the  instant  when  peace 
had  been  established  all  over  Europe,  but  Avhen  neither 
national  character  nor  national  architecture  had  as  yet  boei. 
seriously  changed  by  promiscuous  intercouise  or  modern 
'^  im[»rovement ;"  when,  however,  nearly  every  ancient  and 
beautiful  building  had  been  long  left  in  a  state  of  conijtaia- 
tive  neglect,  so  that  its  as])ect  of  partial  ruhiousness,  and  of 
separation  irom  recent  active  life,  gave  to  every  edifice  ji 
peculiar  interest — half  sorrowful,  hah'  sublime  ; — at  that  njo- 
ment  Prout  was  trained  among  the  rough  rocks  and  simpli 


28  PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 

cottages  of  Cornwall,  until  his  eye  was  accustomed  to  foUcw 
with  delight  the  rents  and  breaks,  and  irregularities  which, 
to  another  man,  M'ould  have  been  offensive  ;  and  then,  gifted 
with  infinite  readiness  in  composition,  but  also  with  infinite 
iftection  for  the  kind  of  subjects  he  had  to  portray,  he  was 
»ent  to  i)reserve,  in  an  almost  innumerable  series  of  drawings, 
every  one  made  on  the  spot,  the  aspect  borne,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century,  by  cities  which,  in'  a  few  years 
more,  re-kindled  wars,  or  unexpected  prosperities,  were  to 
ravage,  or  renovate,  into  nothingness. 

It  seems  strange  to  pass  from  Prout  to  John  Lewis ;  but 
there  is  this  fellowship  between  them,  that  both  seem  to  have 
been  intended  to  appreciate  the  characters  of  foreign  coun- 
tries more  than  of  their  own — nay,  to  have  been  born  in  Eng- 
land chiefly  that  the  excitement  of  strangeness  might  enhance 
to  them  the  interest  of  the  scenes  they  had  to  representi  I 
believe  John  Lewis  to  have  done  more  entire  justice  to  all 
his  powers  (and  they  are  magnificent  ones)  than  any  other 
man  amongst  us.  His  mission  was  evidently  to  portray  the 
comparatively  animal  life  of  the  southern  and  eastern  families 
of  mankind.  For  this  he  was  prepared  in  a  somewhat  singu- 
lar way — by  being  led  to  study,  and  endowed  with  altogether 
peculiar  apprehension  of,  the  most  sublime  charactei's  of  ani- 
mals themselves.  Rubens,  Rembrandt,  Snyders,  Tintoret, 
and  Titian,  have  all,  in  various  ways,  drawn  wild  beasts  mag- 
nificently; but  they  have  in  some  sort  humanized  or  demo- 
nized  them,  making  them  either  ravenous  fiends  or  educated 
beasts,  that  would  draw  cars,  and  had  respect  for  hermits. 
The  sullen  isolation  of  the  brutal  nature ;  the  dignity  and 
quietness  of  the  mighty  limbs  ;  the  shaggy  mountainoua 
power,  mingled  with  grace,  as  of  a  flo^ving  stream;  the 
stealthy  restraint  of  strength  and  wrath  in  every  soundlesa 
motion  of  the  gigantic  frame  ;  all  this  seems  never  to  have 
been  seen,  much  less  drawn,  until  LcAvis  drew  and  himself 


PRE-RAPIIAELIIriSM.  26 

engraved  a  series  of  animal  subjects,  now  many  years  ago. 
Since  then,  he  has  devoted  himself  to  the  portraiture  of  those 
European  and  Asiatic  races,  among  whom  the  refinements  of 
civilization  exist  without  its  laws  or  its  energies,  and  in  whom 
the  fierceness,  indolence,  and  subtlety  of  animal  nature  ar# 
associated  with  brilliant  imagination  and  strong  aifections. 
To  this  task  he  has  brought  not  only  intense  perception  of 
the  kind  of  character,  but  powers  of  a'rtistical  composition 
like  those  of  the  great  Venetians,  displayuig,  at  the  same 
time,  a  refinement  of  drawing  almost  miraculous,  and  appre- 
ciable only,  as  the  minntiai  of  natui-e  itself  are  appreciable, 
by  the  help  of  the  microscope.  The  value,  therefore,  of  his 
works,  as  records  of  the  aspect  of  the  scenery  and  inhabitants 
of  the  south  of  Sj^ain  and  of  the  East,  in  the  earlier  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  is  quite  above  all  estimate. 

I  hardly  know  how  to  speak  of  Mulready :  in  delicacy  and 
completion  of  drawing,  and  splendor  of  color,  he  takes  place 
beside  John  Lewis  and  the  pre-liaphaelites ;  but  he  has,. 
throughout  his  career,  displayed  no  definiteness  in  choice  of 
sul)ject.  lie  must  be  named  among  the  painters  who  have 
studied  with  industry,  and  have  made  themselves  great  by 
doing  so  ;  but  having  obtained  a  consummate  method  of 
execution,  he  has  thrown  it  away  on  subjects  either  alto- 
gether uninteresting,  or  above  his  powers,  or  \\ni\t  for  pic 
torial  representation.  "  The  Cherry  "Woman,"  exhibited  in 
1850,  may  be  named  as  an  exami)le  of  the  first  kind;  the 
"  Burchell  and  Sophia''  of  the  second  (the  character  of  Sir 
William  Thornhill  being  utterly  missed)  ;  the  "  Seven  Ages'' 
of  the  third ;  for  this  subject  cannot  be  pahited.  In  the 
written  passage,  the  thoughts  are  progressive  and  connected  ; 
in  the  picture  they  must  be  co-existent,  and  yet  separate  ; 
nor  can  all  the  characters  of  the  ages  be  rendered  in  painting 
at  all.  One  may  represent  the  soldier  at  the  cannon's  mouth, 
but   one   cannot   paint   the   "  bubble  reputation"  which  ho 


30  PUE-nAlMIARl.lTISM. 

seeks.     Mulready,  therefore,  while  he  has  always  produced 
exquisite   pieces  of  painting,  has   failed   in   doing   anythiug 
which   can  be  of  true   or   extensive  use.     He   has,  indeed,, 
understood  how  to  discipline  his  genius,  but  never  how  to 
lirect  it. 

Edwin  Landseer  is  the  last  i)ainter  but  one  whom  I  shah 
name  :  I  need  not  point  out  to  any  one  acquainted  with  hia 
earlier  works,  the  labor,  or  watchfulness  of  nature  which 
they  involve,  nor  need  I  do  more  than  allude  to  the  peculiar 
faculties  of  his  mind.  It  will  at  once  be  granted  that  the 
highest  inerits  of  his  pictures  are  throughout  found  in  those 
parts  of  them  which  are  least  like  what  had  before  been 
accomi)lished ;  and  that  it  was  not  by  the  study  of  Raphael 
that  he  attained  his  eminent  success,  but  by  a  healthy  love  of 
Scotch  terriers. 

None  of  these  painters,  however,  it  will  be  answered,  aftbi-d 
examples  of  the  rise  of  the  highest  imaginative  power  out  of 
close  study  of  matters  of  fact.  Be  it  remembered,  however, 
that  the  imaginative  power,  in  its  magnificence,  is  not  to  be 
found  every  day.  Lewis  has  it  in  no  mean  degree ;  but  we 
camiot  hope  to  find  it  at  its  highest  more  than  once  in  an  age. 
We  have  had  it  once,  and  must  be  content. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  last  century,  among  the  various 
drawings  executed,  according  to  the  quiet  manner  of  the 
time,  in  greyish  blue,  with  brown  foregroimds,  some,  began 
to  b"*  noticed  as  exhibiting  rather  more  than  ordinary  dili- 
gcn(  1  and  delicacy,  signed  W.  Turnei-.*  There  was  nothing, 
how  aver,  in  them  at  all  indicative  of  genius,  or  even  of  more 
tlia-o  ordhiary  talent,  unless  in  some  of  the  subjects  a  large 
pe  ception  of  space,  and  excessive  clearness  and  decision  in 
tbj  arrangement  of -masses.  Gradually  and  cautiously  the 
'■'  les   became  mingled   with   delicate   green,  and  then  witl 

•  He  did  not  use  his  full  signature,  J.  M.  "W.,  until  about  the  year  1800 


PUK-UAPIIAEUTISM.  31 

gold;  tliL'  browns  in  the  foregi'ound  became  tirst  more  posi- 
tive, and  then  were  slightly  mingled  with  other  local  colors ; 
while  the  touch,  which  had  at  first  been  heavy  and  broken, 
like  that  of  the  ordinary  drawing  masters  of  the  time,  grew 
more  and  more  refined  and  expressive,  nntil  it  lost  itself  in  a 
method  of  execution  often  too  delicate  for  the  eye  to  follow, 
rendering,  with  a  precision  before  unexampled,  both  the 
'texture  and  the  form  of  every  object.  The  style  may  be 
considered  as  jicrfectly  formed  about  the  year  1800,  and  it 
remained  unchanged  for  twenty  years. 

During  that  period  the  painter  had  attem2>ted,  and  with 
more  or  less  success  liad  rendered,  every  order  of  landscape 
subject,  but  always  on  the  same  principle,  subduing  the  colors 
of  nature  into  a  harmony  of  which  the  key-notes  are  greyish 
green  and  brown  ;  pure  blues  and  delicate  golden  yellows 
being  admitted  in  small  quantity,  as  tlie  lowest  and  highest 
hmits  of  shade  and  light:  and  briglit  local  colors  in  extremely 
small  quantity  in  figures  or  other  minor  accessaries. 

Pictures  executed  on  such  a  system  are  not,  properly 
8[)eaking,  w  orks  in  color  at  all  ;  they  are  studies  of  light  and 
shade,  in  which  both  the  shade  and  the  distance  are  rendered 
in  the  general  hue  which  best  expi-esses  their  attril)utes  of 
coolness  and  transparency;  and  the  lights  and  the  foreground 
are  executed  in  that  which  best  exj)resses  their  warmth  and 
solidity.  This  advantage  may  just  iis  well  be  taken  as  not, 
in  studies  of  [ight  and  shadow  to  be  executed  with  the  hand; 
but  the  use  of  two,  three,  or  four  colors,  always  in  the  same 
relations  and  places,  d(jes  not  in  the  least  constitute  the  work 
a  study  of  c(jlor,  any  more  than  the  brown  engravings  of  the 
Liljer  Studiorum  ;  nor  would  the  idea  of  color  be  in  gi'neral 
more  i)resent  to  tlie  artist's  mind,  when  he  was  at  work  on 
one  of  these  drawings,  than  when  he  was  nsing  jmre  brown 
in  the  mezzotint  engraving.  But  the  idea  of  space,  warmth, 
and  frcsliness  being  not  successfully  expressible  in  a  single 


S2  PRE-RAriTAELITISM.  " 

tint,  and  perfectly  expressible  by  the  admission  of  three  oi 
four,  he  allows  himself  this  advantage  when  it  is  possible, 
without  in  the  least  embarrassing  himself  with  the  actual 
color  of  the  objects  to  be  represented.  A  stone  in  the  fort> 
ground  might  in  nature  have  been  cold  grey,  but  it  will  b« 
drawn  nevertheless  of  a  rich  brown,  because  it  is  in  the  fore 
ground ;  a  hill  in  tlie  distance  might  in  nature  be  purple  with 
heath,  or  golden  with  furze ;  but  it  Avill  be  drawn  nevertheless 
of  a  cool  grey,  because  it  is  in  the  distance. 

This  at  least  was  the  general  theory, — carried  out  with 
great  severity  in  many,  both  of  the  drawings  and  pictures 
executed  by  him  during  the  period  :  in  others  more  or  less 
modified  by  the  cautious  introduction  of  color,  as  the  painter 
felt  his  liberty  increasing ;  for  the  system  was  evidently  never 
considered  as  final,  or  as  anything  more  than  a  means  of  pro- 
gress :  the  conventional,  easily  manageable  color,  was  visibly 
adopted,  only  that  his  rahid  might  beat  perfect  "liberty  to 
address  itself  to  the  acquirement  of  the  first  and  most  neces- 
sary knowledge  in  all  art — that  of  form.  But  as  form,  in 
landscape,  implies  vast  bulk  and  space,  the  use  of  the  tints 
which  enabled  him  best  to  express  them,  was  actually  auxi- 
liary to  the  mere  drawing ;  and,  therefore,  not  only  permis- 
sible, but  even  necessary,  while  more  brilliant  or  varied  tints 
were  never  indulged  in,  except  when  they  might  be  introduced 
without  the  slightest  danger  of  diverting  his  mind  for  an 
instant  from  his  principal  object.  And,  therefore,  it  will  be 
genera|.ly  found  in  the  works  of  this  period,  that  exactly  in 
proportion  to  the  importance  and  general  toil  ot  the  composi- 
tion, is  the  severity  of  the  tint ;  and  that  the  play  of  coloT 
begins  to  show  itself  first  in  slight  and  small  drawings,  Avhere 
he  felt  that  he  could  easily  secure  all  that  he  wanted  in  form. 

Thus  the  "  Crossing  the  Brook,"  and  such  other  elaborate 
and  large  compositions,  are  actually  painted  in  nothing  but 
grey,  bi-own,  and   Ijlue,  with  a  point  or  two  of  severe  Ic  a' 


PRTi:-RArnAELTTISM.  33 

(lolor  in  tlie  ligures;  but  in  the  minor  drawings,  tender  pas- 
sages of  complicated  color  occur  not  uufrequently  in  easy 
places ;  and  even  before  the  year  1800  he  begins  to  introduce 
it  with  evident  joyfulness  and  longing  in  his  rude  and  simple 
tudies,  just  as  a  child,  if  it  could  be  supposed  to  govern  itsell 
by  a  fully  developed  intellect,  would  cautiously,  but  with  infi- 
nite pleasure,  add  now  and  then  a  tiny  dish  of  fruit  or  other 
dangerous  luxury  to  the  simple  order  of  its  daily  fare.  Thus, 
in  the  foregrounds  of  his  most  severe  drawnigs,  we  not  uufre- 
quently find  him  indulging  in  the  luxury  of  a  peacock;  and  it 
is  impossible  to  express  the  joyfulness  with  which  he  secmt: 
to  design  its  graceful  form,  and  deepen  with  soft  pencilling 
the  bloom  of  its  blue,  after  he  has  worked  through  the  stern 
detail  of  his  almost  colorless  drawing.  A  rainbow  is  another 
of  his  most  frequently  permitted  indulgences ;  and  we  find 
him  very  early  allowing  the  edges  of  his  evening  clouds  to  be 
touched  with  soft  rose-color  or  gold ;  while,  whenever  the 
hues  of  nature  in  anywise  foil  into  his  system,  and  can  be 
caught  without  a  dangerous  departure  from  it,  he  instantly 
throws  his  whole  soul  into  the  faithful  rendering  of  them. 
Thus  the  usual  brown  tones  of  his  foreground  become  warmed 
into  sudden  vigor,  and  are  varied  and  enhanced  with  inde- 
scribable delight,  A\hen  he  finds  himself  by  the  shore  of  a 
moorland  stream,  where  they  truly  express  the  stain  of  its 
golden  rocks,  and  the  darkness  of  its  clear.  Cairngorm-like 
pools,  and  the  usual  serenity  of  his  aerial  blue  is  enriched  into 
the  softness  and  depth  of  the  sapphire,  when   it  can  deepen 

he  distant  simiiber  of  some  Highland   lake,  oi-  temper  the 
gldoiny  shadows  of  the  evening  upon  its  hills. 

The  system  of  his  cohn-  being  thus  simplified,  he  could 
address  all  the  strength  of  his  mind  to  the  accnmnlation 
of  facts  of  form;  his  choice  of  subject,  .nnd  his  uietliods 
of  treatment,  are  therefore  as  various  as  his  color  is  simple ; 

and   it  is  not  a  little  ditKcult  to  uive  the  reader  »\  ho  is  unac 

2* 


H  Pr.E-UAPflAET.lTlSM. 

quaintc  d  with  his  works,  an  idea  either  of  their  infinitude 
of  aims,  3n  the  one  hand,  or  of  the  kind  of  feeling  which  per- 
vades tlieni  all,  on  the  other.  No  subject  was  too  low  or  too 
iiigh  for  liim  ;  we  find  him  one  day  hard  at  work  on  a  cock 
and  hen,  with  their  family  of  chickens  in  a  farm-yard ;  and 
bringing  all  the  refinement  of  his  execution  into  play  to 
express  the  toxtui-e  of  the  plumage;  next  day  he  is  drawing 
the  Di-agon  of  Colchis.  .One  hour  he  is  mucli  interested  in 
a  gust  of  wind  blowing  away  an  okl  woman's  cap ;  the  next 
he  is  })ainting  the  fifth  plague  of  Egypt.  Every  landscape 
painter  before  hira  had  acquired  distinction  by  confining  his 
efforts  to  one  chiss  of  subject.  Ilobbima  painted  oaks ; 
Ruysdael,  waterfalls  and  copses;  Cnyp,  river  or  meadow 
scenes  in  quiet  afternoons ;  Salvator  and  Poussin,  such  kind 
of  mountain  scenery  as  people  could  conceive,  who  lived  in 
towns  in  the  seventeenth  century.  But  I  am  well  persuaded 
that  if  all  the  works  of  Turner,  np  to  the  year  1820,  were 
divided  into  classes  (as  he  has  himself  divided  them  in  the 
Liber  Studiorum),  no  preponderance  could  be  assigned  to  one 
class  over  another.  There  is  ai'chitecture,  including  a  large 
number  of  foi-mal  "gentlemen's  seats,"  I  suppose  drawings 
conunissioned  by  the  owners;  then  lowland  pastoral  scenery  of 
every  kind,  including  nearly  all  farming  operations, — plough- 
ing, harrowing,  hedging  and  ditching,  fehing  trees,  sheep- 
washing,  and  I  know  not  what  else ;  then  all  kinds  of  town 
life — court-yards  of  inns,  starting  of  mail  coaches,  interiors 
of  shops,  house-buildings,  fairs,  elections,  tfec. ;  then  all  kinds 
of  inner  domestic  life — interiors  of  rooms,  studies  of  costumes, 
of  still  life,  aiul  heraldry,  including  multitudes  of  symbolical 
^•ignettes;  then  marine "  scenery  of  every  kind,  full  of  local 
incident;  every  kind  of  boat  and  method  of  fishing  for  par- 
ticular fish,  being  specifically  drawn,  round  the  whole  coas^t 
of  England;— pilchard  fishing  at  St.  Ives,  whiting  fishing  at 
Margate,  herring  at  Loch  Fyne  •  and  all  kinds  of  shipping, 


PRE-RAPITAELITISM.  36 

including  studies  of  every  separate  part  of  the  vessels,  and 
many  marine  battle-pieces,  two  in  i)articular  of  Trafalgar, 
both  of  high  imi)ortance, — one  of  the  Victory  after  the  battle, 
uow  in  Greenwich  Hospital ;  another  of  the  Death  of  Nelson, 
in  his  own  gallery ;  then  all  kinds  of  mountain  scenery,  some 
idealised  into  com  posit  ions,  others  of  definite  localities; 
together  with  classical  comiiositiims,  Romes  and  ('arthages 
and  such  others,  by  the  myriad,  with  mythological,  historical, 
or  allegoi'ical  figures, — nymphs,  monsters,  and  spectres  ; 
heroes  and  divinities.* 

What  genei-al  feelhig,  it  may  be  asked  hicredulously,  can 
possibly  pei'vade  all  this?  This,  the  greatest  of  all  feehngs — 
an  utter  forgetfulness  of  self.  Throughout  the  whole  i)eriod 
with  which  we  are  at  present  concerned,  Turner  appears  as  a 
man  of  sympathy  absolutely  infinite — a  sympathy  so  all-em- 
bracing, that  I  know  nothing  but  that  of  Sliakspeare  com- 
parable with  it.  A  soldier's  wife  resting  by  the  roadside  is 
not  beneath  it;  Ivi/pah  the  daughter  of  Aiah,  watching  the 
dead  bodies  of  her  sons,  not  above  it.  Nothing  can  possibly 
be  so  mean  as  that  it  will  not  interest  his  whole  mind,  and 
carry  away  his  whole  heart;  nothing  so  great  or  solenm  but 
that  he  can  raise  himself  into  harmony  with  it;  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  prophesy  of  him  at  any  moment,  whether,  the 
next,  he  will  be  in  laughtei'  or  in  tears. 

This  is  the  root  of  the  man's  greatness;  and  it  follows  as  a 
(natter  of  course  that  this  sympathy  must  give  him  a  subtle 
power  of  expression,  even  of  the  characters  of  mere  material 
things,  snch  as  no  other  painter  ever  possessed.  The  man 
who  can  best  leel  the  dilfei-ence  between  rudeness  and  tender 
ness  in  humanity,  perceives  also  nioic  dilfcrence  between  tin 
branches  of  an  oak   and   a  willow    than   anv  one  else  would ; 


•  I    sliall    give    a  calaloijuc  raisoniiee  of   all   IfiLs    ii     llio    lliirii    volunv! 
af  "  Modiru  rainttre." 


36  PKE-RAniAELITISM. 

and,  therefore,  necessarily  the  most  striking  character  of  tht 
drawings  themselves  is  the  speciality  of  whatever  they  repre- 
sent— the  thorough  stiflness  of  what  is  stiif,  and  grace  of  what 
IS  graceful,  and  vastness  of  what  is  vast ;  but  through  and  be- 
yond all  this,  the  condition  of  the  mind  of  the  painter  himself  18 
easily  enough  discoverable  by  comparison  of  a  large  numbei 
of  the  di'awings.  It  is  singularly  serene  and  peaceful :  in 
itself  quite  passionless,  though  entering  with  ease  into  the 
external  passion  which  it  contemplates.  By  the  eflbrt  of  ita 
will  it  sympathises  with  tumult  or  distress,  even  in  their 
extremes,  but  there  is  no  tumult,  no  sorrow  in  itself,  only  a 
chastened  and  exquisitely  peaceful  cheerfulness,  deeply  medi- 
tative ;  touched  without  loss  of  its  own  perfect  balance,  by 
sadness  on  the  one  side,  and  stooping  to  playfulness  upon  the 
other.  I  shall  never  cease  to  regret  the  destruction,  by  fire, 
now  several  years  ago,  of  a  drawing  which  always  seemed  to 
me  to  be  the  perfect  image  of  the  j^ainter's  mind  at  this 
period, — the  drawing  of  Brignal  Church  near  Rokeby, 
of  which  a  feeble  idea  may  still  be  gathered  from  the  engrav- 
ing (in  the  Yorkshire  series).  The  spectator  stands  on  the 
"Brignal  banks,"  looking  down  into  the  glen  at  twilight ;  the 
sky  is  still  full  of  soft  rays,  though  the  sun  is  gone ;  and  the 
Greta  glances  brightly  in  the  valley,  singing  its  even-song ; 
two  white  clouds,  following  each  other,  move  without  wind 
through  the  hollows  of  the  ravine,  and  others  lie  couched  on 
the  far  away  moorlands;  every  leaf  of  the  woods  is  still  in  the 
delicate  air;  a  boy's  kite,  incajmble  of  rising,  has  becoma 
entangled  in  their  branches,  he  is  climbing  to  recover  it ; 
and  just  behind  it  in  the  picture,  almost  indicated  by  it,  the 
[ow\j  church  is  seen  in  its  secluded  field  between  the  rocks 
and  the  stream ;  and  around  it  the  low  churchyard  wall,  and 
the  few  white  stones  which  mark  the  resting  places  of  those 
who  can  clinib  the  rocks  no  more,  nor  hear  the  river  sing 
as  it  passes. 


PKE-EAPHAELinSM.     '  37 

There  are  many  other  existing  drawings  which  indicate  tlie 
same  character  of  mind,  though  I  think  none  so  touchmg  or 
so  beautiful ;  yet  they  are  not,  as  I  said  above,  more  numerous 
than  those  which  express  his  sympathy  with  sublimer  or  more 
active  scenes ;  but  they  are  ahnost  always  marked  by  a  ten- 
derness of  execution,  and  have  a  look  of  being  beloved  in 
every  jxart  of  them,  which  shows  them  to  be  the  truest  expres- 
sion of  his  own  feelings. 

One  other  characteristic  of  his  mind  at  this  period  remains 
to  be  noticed —  its  reverence  for  talent  in  others.  Not  the 
reverence  which  acts  upon  the  practices  of  men  as  if  they 
were  the  laws  of  nature,  but  that  which  is  ready  to  appreciate 
the  power,  and  receive  the  assistance,  of  every  mind  which 
has  been  previously  employed  in  the  same  direction,  so  far  as 
its  teaching  seems  to  be  consistent  wnth  the  great  text-book 
of  nature  itself.  Turner  thus  studied  almost  CA^ery  preceding 
landscape  painter,  chiefly  Claude,  Poussin,  Vandeveldc, 
Loutherbourg,  and  Wilson.  It  was  probably  by  the  Sir 
George  Beaumonts  and  other  feeble  conventionalists  of  the 
period,  that  he  was  jjersuaded  to  devote  his  attention  to  the 
works  of  these  men ;  and  his  having  done  so  will  be  thought, 
a  few  scores  of  years  hence,  evidence  of  perhaps  the  greatest 
modesty  ever  shown  by  a  man  of  original  power.  Modesty 
at  once  admirable  and  unfortunate,  for  the  study  of  the  works 
of  Vandevelde  and  Claude  was  productive  of  unmixed  mis- 
chief to  him ;  he  spoiled  many  of  his  marine  pictures,  as  for 
instance  Lord  Ellesniere's,  by  imitation  of  the  former ;  and 
from  the  latter  learned  a  false  ideal,  which  confirmed  by  the 
uotions  of  Greek  art  prevalent  in  London  in  the  beginning  of 
this  century,  has  manifested  itself  in  numy  vulgarities  in  his 
composition  pictures,  vulgarities  which  may  perhaps  be  best 
expressed  by  the  general  term  "Twickenham  Classicism,"  as 
consisting  princij)ally  in  conceptions  of  ancient  or  of  rural  lify 
such  as  havb'  intluenccd  the  erection  of  most  of  our  suburbuu 


38  '       '       rRE-RAPHAELITISM. 

villus.  From  Nicolo  Ponssiii  and  Loutherbourg  ho  seems  tc 
have  derived  advantage  ;  perhaps  also  from  Wilson  ;  and  much 
m  his  subseepient  ti'avels  from  far  higher  men,  especially  Tin 
toret  and  Fanl  Veronese.  I  have  myself  heard  him  speaking 
with  singular  delight  of  Jhe  putting  m  of  the  beech  leaves  ii. 
the  upper  right-hand  corner  of  Titian's  Peter  Martyr.  1 
cannot  in  any  of  his  works  trace  the  slightest  influence  of 
Salvator ;  and  I  am  not  surprised  at  it,  for  though  Salvator 
was  a  man  of  far  higher  powers  than  either  Vandevelde  oi 
Claude,  he  was  a  wilful  and  gross  caricaturist.  Turner  would 
condescend  to  be  helped  by  feeble  men,  but  could  not  be  cor- 
rupted by  false  men.  Besides,  he  had  never  himself  seen 
classical  life,  and  Claude  was  represented  to  him  as  competent 
authority  for  it.  But  he  had  seen  mountains  and  torrents, 
and  knew  therefore  that  Salvator  could  not  paint  them. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  drawings  of  this  period 
foitunately  bears  a  date,  1818,  and  brings  us  within  two  years 
of  another  dated  drawing,  no  less  characteristic  of  what  I  shall 
henceforward  call  Turner's  Second  period.  It  is  in  the  pos- 
session of  Mr.  Ilawkesworth  Favvkes  of  Farnley,  one  of 
Turner's  earliest  and  truest  friends ;  and  bears  the  inscription, 
unusually  conspicuous,  heaving  itself  up  and  down  over  the 
eminences  of  the  foreground — "Passage  of  Moj^jt  Cenis.  J. 
M.  W.  Turner,  January  15th,  1820." 

The  scene  is  on  the- summit  of  the  pass  close  to  the  hospice, 
or  what  seems  to  have  been  a  hospice  at  that  time, — I  do  not 
remember  such  at  present, — a  small  square-built  house,  built 
as  if  partly  for  a  fortress,  with  a  detached  flight  of  stone  steps 
ui  front  of  it,  and  a  kind  of  drawbridge  to  the  door.  This 
luilding,  about  400  or  500  yards  ott",  is  seen  in  a  dim,  ashy 
grey  against  the  light,  which  by  help  of  a  violent  blast  of 
mountain  wind  has  broken  through  tlie  depth  of  clouds  which 
hangs  upon  the  crags.  There  is  no  sky,  properly  so  called, 
nothing  but  this  roof  of  drifting  cloud ;  but  neither  is  there 


PRE-RAPIIAELITISM.  *  39 

any  weight  of  darkness — the  high  air  is  too  thin  for  it, — al! 
savage,  howHng,  and  luminous  with  cold,  the  massy  bases  of 
the  granite  hills  jutting  out  here  and  there  grimly  through 
the  snow  Avreaths.  There  is  a  desolate-looking  refuge  on  the 
k'ft,  with  its  number  16,  marked  on  it  in  long  ghastly  figures, 
and  the  wind  is  drifting  the  snow  oft  the  roof  and  through  its 
window  in  a  frantic  whirl ;  the  near  ground  is  all  wan  with 
half-thawed,  half-trampled  snow;  a  diligence  in  front,  whose 
horses,  unable  to  face  the  wind,  have  turned  right  round  with 
fright,  its  passengers  struggling  to  escape,  jannned  in  the 
window ;  a  little  farther  on  is  another  carriage  oif  the  road, 
some  figures  pushing  TTt  its  wheels,  and  its  driver  at  the  horses' 
heads,  pulling  and  lashing  with  all  his  strength,  his  lifted  arm 
stretched  out  against  the  light  of  the  distance,  though  too 
flir  off  for  the  whip  to  be  seen. 

Now  I  am  perfectly  certain  that  any  one  tlioroughly  accus- 
tomed to  the  carlici-  works  of  the  |)ninter,  and  shown  this 
picture  for  the  first  time,  would  be  sti'uck  by  two  altogether 
new  charactei'S  in  it. 

The  lirst,  a  seeming  enjoyment  of  the  excitement  of  the 
scene,  totally  different  from  the  contenijilative  philosophy  with 
which  it  would  formerly  have  been  regarded.  Every  incident 
of  motion  and  of  energy  is  seized  u})on  with  uidescribable 
deliglit,  and  every  line  of  the  com])(>sili(in  animated  Avith  a 
force  and  fury  wliich  are  now  no  longer  the  mere  expression 
of  a  contemi>lated  external  truth,  but  have  origin  in  some  in- 
herent feeling  in  the  ]iaintci"'s  mind. 

The  second,  that  allliough  the  subject  is  one  in  itself  almost 
ii.capabl(!  of  color,  and  although,  in  order  to  increase  the 
wildness  of  the  impression,  nil  biilliniit  local  color  has  been 
refused  even  where  it  might  easily  have  been  introduced,  as 
in  the  figures;  yet  in  the  low  minor  key  Aviiich  has  been 
chosen,  the  melodies  of  color  have  been  i-laborated  to  the 
utmost  possible'  pit'h,  so  as  to  become  a  leading,  instead  of  8 


40  •  PRE-RAPIIAELITISM. 

subordinate,  element  in  the  composition  ;  tlie  subdued  warm 
hues  of  the  granite  promontories,  the  dull  stone  color  of  thft 
walls  of  the  buildings,  clearly  opposed,  even  in  shade,  to  the 
grey  of  the  snow  wreaths  heaped  against  them,  and  the  faint 
greens  and  ghastly  blues  of  the  glacier  ice,  being  all  expressed 
with  delicacies  of  transition  utterly  unexampled  in  any  previoua 
drawings. 

These,  accordingly,  are  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  works 
of  Turner's  second  period,  as  distinguished  from  the  first, — a 
new  energy  inhei^ent  in  the  mind  of  the  painter,  diminishing 
the  repose  and  exalting  the  force  and  fire  of  his  conceptions, 
and  the  presence  of  Color,  as  at  least  an  essential,  and  often  a 
principal,  element  of  design. 

Not  that  it  is  impossible,  or  even  unusual,  to  find  drawings 
of  serene  subject,  and  perfectly  quiet  feeling,  among  the  com- 
positions of  this  period ;  but  the  repose  is  in  them,  just  as  the 
energy  and  tumult  were  in  the  earlier  period,  an  external 
quality,  which  the  painter  images  by  an  efibrt  of  the  will:  it 
is  no  longer  a  character  inherent  in  himself.  The  "  Ulleswater,'' 
in  the  England  series,  is  one  of  those  which  are  in  most  per- 
fect peace  :  in  'the  "  Cowes,"  the  silence  is  only  broken  by  the 
dash  of  the  boat's  oars,  and  in  the  "Alnwick''  by  a  stag 
drmking ;  but  in  at  least  nine  drawings  out  of  ten,  either  sky, 
water,  or  figures  are  in  rapid  motion,  and  the  grandest  draw- 
ings ai'e  almost  always  those  Avhich  have  even  violent  action 
in  one  or  other,  or  in  all :  e.  g.  high  force  of  Tees,  Coventry, 
Llanthony,  Salisbury,  Llanberis,  and  such  others. 

The  color  is,  however,  a  more  absolute  distinction  ;  and  we 
must  return  to  Mr.  Fawkes's  collection  in  order  to  see  how 
the  change  in  it  was  effected.  That  such  a  change  would  take 
place  at  one  time  or  other  was  of  course  to  be  securely  anti- 
cipated, the  conventional  system  of  the  first  pei-iod  being,  as 
above  stated,  merely  a  means  of  Study.  But  the  immediate 
cwwe  was  the  journey  of  the  year  1820.    As  might  be  guessed 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM.  41 

from  the  legend  on  the  drawing  above  described,  "Passage 
of  Mont  Cenis.  January  loth,  1820,"  that  drawing  represents 
what  liappened  on  the  day  in  question  to  the  painter  himself. 
He  passed  the  Alps  then  in  the  winter  of  1820  ;  and  either  in 
the  previous  or  subsequent  summer,  but  on  the  same  journey, 
he  made  a  series  of  sketches  on  the  Rhine,  in  body  color,  now 
in  Mr.  Fawkes's  collection.  Every  one  of  those  sketches  is 
the  almost  instantaneous  record  of  an  effect  of  color  or  atmo- 
sphere, taken  strictly  from  nature,  the  drawing  and  the  details 
of  every  subject  being  comparatively  subordinate,  and  the 
color  neai-ly  as  principal  as  the  light  and  shade  had  been  be- 
lure, — certainly  the  leading  feature,  though  the  light  and 
shade  are  always  exquisitely  harmonized  with  it.  And  natu- 
rally, as  the  color  becomes  the  leading  object,  those  times  of 
day  are  chosen  in  which  it  is  most  lovely  ;  and  whereas  before, 
at  least  five  out  of  six  of  Turner's  drawings  represented  ordi- 
nary daylight,  we  now  find  his  attention  directed  constantly 
to  the  evening :  and,  for  the  first  time,  we  have  those  rosy 
lights  upon  the  hills,  those  gorgeous  foils  of  sun  through  flam- 
ing heavens,  those  solemn  twilights,  with  the  blue  moon  rising 
as  tlie  Avestern  sky  grows  dim,  which  have  ever  since  been 
the  themes  of  his  mightiest  thoughts. 

I  have  no  doubt,  that  the  immediate  reason  of  this  change 
was  the  impression  made  upon  him  by  the  colors  of  the  con- 
tinental skies.  When  he  first  travelled  on  the  Continent 
(1800),  he  was  comparatively  a  young  student;  not  yet  able 
to  draw  form  as  he  wanted,  he  was  forced  to  give  all  his 
thoughts  and  strength  to  this  primary  object.  But  now  he 
was  free  to  receive  other  impressions ;  the  time  was  come  for 
[»f-rfccting  liis  art,  and  the  first  sunset  which  lie  saw  on  the 
Khine  taught  him  that  all  previous  landscape  art  was  vain 
ainl  valueless,  that  in  comparison  with  natural  color,  the 
thiiiL^s  that  had  been  called  paintings  were  mere  ink  and 
charcoal,  and  that  all  precedent  and   all  authority   must  b* 


4'.^  PRE-UAPHAELITISM. 

cast  uvN'ay  at  once,  and  trodden  under  foot.  He  cast  them 
away:  the  memonos  of  Vandevekle  and  Claude  were  at  Once 
weeded  out  of  the  great  nihid  tliey  had  encumbered ;  they 
And  all  the  rubbish  of  the  schools  together  with  them;  the 
waves  of  the  Rhine  swept  them  away  for  ever  ;  and  a  ne^v 
dawn  rose  over  the  rocks  of  the  Siebengebirge. 

There  was  another  motive  at  work,  which  rendered  the 
change  still  more  complete.  His  fellow  artists  were  alreadv 
conscious  enough  of  his  superior  power  in  drawing,  and  their 
best  hope  was,  that  he  might  not  be  able  to  color.  They  had 
begun  to  express  this  hope  loudly  enough  for  it  to  reach  liis 
ears.  The  engraver  of  one  of  his  most  important  marine 
pictures  told  me,  not  long  ago,  that  one  day  about  the  period 
in  question,  Turner  came  into  his  room  to  examine  the 
progress  of  the  plate,  not  havuig  seen  his  own  picture  for 
several  months.  It  was  one  of  his  dark  early  pictures,  but  in 
the  foreground  was  a  little  piece  of  luxury,  a  ])early  fish 
wrought  into  hues  like  those  of  an  opal.  He  stood  before  the 
picture  for  some  moments;  then  laughed,  and  pointed  joyously 
to  the  fish  ; — "They  say  that  Turner  can't  color  !"  and  turned 
away. 

Under  the  force  of  these  various  impulses  the  change  was 
total.  Every  subject  thenceforth  was  primarily  conceived  in 
color  /  and  no  engraving  ever  gave  the  slightest  idea  of  any 
drawing  of  this  period. 

The  artists  who  had  any  perception  of  the  truth  were  in 
despair;  the  Beaumontites,  classicalists,  and  "  owl  species''  in 
general,  in  as  much  indignation  as  their  dulness  was  cajjal^le 
of.  They  had  deliberately  closed  their  eyes  to  all  nature,  and 
had  gone  on  inquiring,  "  Where  do  you  pi;t  your  l)rown 
tree.' "  A  vast  revelation  was  made  to  them  at  once,  enough 
to  have  dazzled  any  one ;  but  to  them,  light  unendurable  as 
incomprehensible.  They  "did  to  the  moon  complain,"  in  one 
vociferous,  unanmious,    continuous    "Tu  whoo.'"     Shrieking 


PRlMlAlMIAKI.niHM.  43 

rose  from  all  dark  jilaces  at  the  same  instant,  just  ihe  same 
kind  of  shrieking  that  is  now  raised  against  the  Pre-R:ii;liaelite8 
Those  glorious  old  Arabian  Nights,  how  true  they  are  !  Mock 
ing  and  whispering,  and  abuse  loud  and  low  by  turns,  from 
all  the  black  stones  beside  the  road,  when  one  living  soul  is 
toiling  up  tlie  hill  to  get  the  golden  water.  Mocking  and 
whispei'ing,  that  he  may  look  back,  and  become  a  black  stone 
like  themselves. 

Turner  looked  not  back,  but  he  went  on  m  such  a  tenn)er 
as  a  strong  man  must  be  in,  when  he  is  forced  to  walk  with 
his  fingers  in  his  ears.  lie  retired  into  himself;  he  could  look 
no  longer  for  helj),  or  counsel,  or  sympathy  from  any  one;  and 
the  spirit  of  defiance  in  which  he  was  forced  to  labor  led  him 
somi'times  into  violences,  from  which  the  slightest  exiu'cssion 
of  sympathy  would  have  saved  hiin.  The  new  energy  that 
was  upon  him,  and  the  utter  is(jlation  into  which  he  w;us 
driven,  wore  both  alike  dangerous,  and  many  drawings  of  the 
time  show  the  evil  effects  of  both  ;  some  of  them  being  hasty, 
wild,  or  experimental,  and  others  little  more  than  magnificent 
expressions  of  defiance  of  public  opinion. 

I>ut  all  have  this  nol)le  virtue — they  are  in  everytliing  his 
own  :  there  are  no  more  reminiscences  of  dead  masters,  no 
more  trials  of  skill  in  the  manner  of  Claude  en*  Poussin ;  every 
faculty  of  his  soul  is  fixed  u[)On  nature  only,  as  he  saw  her,  or 
as  he  iHMnemltered  her. 

1  have  s])ok(n  above  of  his  gigantic  memory  :  it  is  espvcially 
necessary  to  notice  this,  in  order  that  we  may  understand  thr 
kind  of  grasp  which  a  man  of  real  im.igination  takes  of  nl' 
things  that  ar(!  once  l)rought  within  his  reach — grasp  thence 
forth  not  to  be  relaxed  for  ever. 

On  looking  over  any  catalogues  of  his  works,  or  of  particulai 
series  of  them,  Ave  shall  notice  tlie  recurrence  of  the  same  sub- 
ject two,  (lii-ce,  or  even  many  times.  Tn  any  othei-  artist  thi? 
would   l)e  nothing  remarkaf)le.     rrobnbly  most  modern  land 


44  PBE-RAPHAKLITISM. 

scape  painters  multiply  a  favorite  subject  twenty,  thirty,  oi 
sixty  fold,  putting  the  shadows  and  the  clouds  in  different 
places,  and  "  inventing,"  as  they  are  pleased  to  call  it,  a  new 
''eifect"  every  time.  But  if  we  examine  the  successions  of 
Tui-ner's  subjects,  we  shall  find  them  either  the  recoi'ds  of  s 
succession  of  impressions  actually  perceived  by  him  at  some 
fiworite  locahty,  or  else  repetitions  of  one  impression  received 
in  early  youth,  and  again  and  again  realised  as  his  hicreasing 
powers  enabled  him  to  do  better  justice  to  it.  In  either  case 
we  shall  find  them  records  of  seen  facts  ;  never  compositions 
in  his  room  to  fill  up  a  favorite  outline. 

For  instance,  every  traveller,  at  least  every  traveller  of 
thirty  years'  standing,  must  love  Calais,  the  place  where  he 
first  felt  himself  in  a  strange  world.  Turner  evidently  loved 
it  excessively.  I  have  never  catalogued  his  studies  of  Calais, 
but  I  remember,  at  this  moment,  five :  there  is  first  the  "Pas 
de  Calais,"  a  very  large  oil  painting,  which  is  what  he  saw  in 
broad  daylight  as  he  crossed  over,  when  he  got  near  the 
French  side.  It  is  a  careful  study  of  French  fishing  boats 
running  for  the  shore  before  the  wmd,  with  the  picturesque 
old  city  in  the  distance.  Then  there  is  the  "  Calais  Harbor  " 
in  the  Liber  Studiorum:  that  is  what  he  saw  just  as  he  was 
going  into  the  harbor, — a  heavy  brig  warping  out,  and  very 
likely  to  get  in  his  way,  or  run  against  the  pier,  and  bad 
weather  coming  on.  Then  there  is  the  "  Calais  Pier,"  a  large 
painting,  engraved  some  years  ago  by  Mr.  Lupton:*  that  is 
wltat  he  sa\y  when  he  had  landed,  and  ran  back  directly  to  the 
[.ier  to  see  what  had  become  of  the  brig.  The  weather  had 
got  still  worse,  the  fish  women  were  being  blown  about  in  a 
distressful  manner  on  the  pier  head,  and  some  more  fishing 
boats  were  running  in  with  all  speed.  Then  there  is  the 
"Fortrouge,"  Calais  :  that  is  what  he  saw  after  he  had  been 

*  The  plate  was,  however,  never  pubhshed. 


rRE-RAPIIAELITISM.  45 

home  to  Dessein's,  and  dined,  and  went  out  again  in  the  evening 
to  walk  on  the  sands,  the  tide  being  down.  He  had  never  seeii 
such  a  waste  of  sands  before,  and  it  made  an  impression  on  him. 
The  shrimp  girls  were  all  scattered  over  them  too,  and  moved 
about  in  white  sjwts  on  the  wild  shore;  and  the  stonn  had 
lulled  a  little,  and  there  was  a  sunset — such  a  sunset, — and  the 
bars  of  Fortrouge  seen  against  it,  skeleton-wise.  He  did  not 
paint  that  directly  ;  thought  over  it, — painted  it  a  long  while 
afterwards. 

Then  there  is  the  vignette  in  the  illustrations  to  Scott. 
That  is  what  he  saw  as  he  was  going  home,  meditatively ;  and 
the  revolving  lighthouse  came  blazing  out  upon  him  suddenly, 
and  disturbed  him.  He  did  not  like  that  so  much ;  made  a 
vignette  of  it,  however,  when  he  was  asked  to  do  a  bit  of 
Calais,  twenty  or  thirty  years  afterwards,  having  already  done 
all*  the  rest. 

Turner  never  told  me  all  this,  but  any  one  may  see  it  if  he 
will  compare  the  pictures.  They  might,  possibly,  not  be 
impressions  of  a  single  day,  but  of  two  days  or  three;  though 
m  all  human  in-obability  they  were  seen  just  as  I  have  stated 
them;*  but  they  are  records  of  successive  impressions,  as 
plainly  written  as  ever  traveller's  diary.  All  of  them  pure 
veracities.     Therefore  inmiortal. 

I  could  multiply  these  series  almost  indefinitely  from  the 
rest  of  his  works.  What  is  curious,  some  of  them  have  a  kind 
of  pi'ivate  mark  running  through  all  the  subjects.  Thus  I 
know  three  drawings  of  Scarborough,  and  all  of  them  have  a 
starfish  in  the  foreground  :  I  do  not  remember  any  others  of 
bis  marine  subjects  which  have  a  starfish. 

The  other  kind  of  repetition — the  recurrence  to  one  early 
impression — is  however  still  more  remarkable.     In  the  colleo 

*  And  tl  e  more  probably  because  Turner  was  never  fond  of  staying  long 
at  any  place,  and  was  least  of  all  likely  to  make  a  pause  of  two  or  three  dayr 
at  the  beginniiif?  of  liia  journey. 


46  IMIE-UAIMIAELITISM. 

tion  ofF.  II.  13;ik',  Esc].,  there  is  a  small  drauiug  of  Llanthoii) 
Abbey.  It  is  in  his  boyish  maniiei',  its  date  probably  about 
1795;  evidently  a  sketch  tVom  nature,  linished  at  home.  I: 
iiad  been  a  showery  day  ;  the  hills  were  partially  concealed 
by  tlie  rain,  and  gleams  of  sunshine  breaking  out  at  intei  c.alfe 
A  man  was  fishing  in  the  mountain  stream.  The  young 
Turner  sought  a  place  of  some  shelter  under  the  bushes; 
made  his  sketch,  took  great  pains  when  he  got  home  to 
imitate  the  rain,  as  he  best  could ;  added  his  child's  luxury  ot 
a  rainbow ;  put  in  the  very  bush  under  which  he  had  taken 
shelter,  and  the  fisherman,  a  somewhat  ill-jointed  and  long- 
legged  fisherman,  in  the  courtly  short  breeches  which  were  the 
fashion  of  the  time. 

Some  thirty  years  afterwards,  with  all  his  powers  in  their 
strongest  training,  and  after  the  total  change  in  his  feelings 
and  prhiciples  which  I  have  endeavored  to  describe,  he  under- 
took the  series  of  "England  and  Wales,"  and  in" that  series 
introduced  the  subject  of  Llanthony  Abbey.  And  behold,  he 
went  back  to  his  boy's  sketch,  and  boy's  thought.  He  kept 
the  very  bushes  in  their  places,  but  brought  the  fisherman  to 
the  other  side  of  the  river,  and  put  him,  in  somewhat  less 
courtly  dress,  under  their  shelter,  instead  of  himself  And 
then  he  set  all  his  gained  strength  and  new  knowledge  at 
work  on  the  well-remembered  shower  of  rain,  that  had  fallen 
thiity  years  before,  to  do  it  better.  The  resultant  drawing* 
is  one  of  the  very  noblest  of  his  second  period. 

Another  ol'the  drawings  of  the  Enghmd  series,  Ulleswater, 
is  the  repetition  of  one  in  Mr.  Fawkes's  collection,  which,  by 
(lie  method  of  its  execution,  I  should  conjecture  to  have  been 
executed  about  the  year  1808,  or  1810:  at  all  events,  it  is  a 
very  quiet  drawing  of  the  first  period.  The  lake  is  quite 
calm;  the  western  liills  in  grey  shadow,  the  eastern  massed  ic 

*  Vide  Modern  I'aiulers,   Part  II.  Sect.  III.  Chap.  IV.  ^  14 


rUE-UAPllAELlTlSM.  47 

light.  Helvellyn  rising  like  a  uii-sl.  bet  ween  tlieni,  uU  being 
tnirronnl  in  the  calm  water.  Some  thin  and  slightly  evanescent 
cows  are  standing  in  the  shallow  water  in  front ;  a  boat  floats 
motionless  about  a  hundred  yards  from  the  shore :  the  foi'e- 
ground  is  of  broken  rocks,  with  lovely  pieces  of  copse  on  the 
right  and  left. 

This  was  evidently  Turner's  record  of  a  quiet  evening  by 
the  shore  of  Ulleswater,  but  it  was  a  feeble  one.  He  could 
not  at  that  time  render  the  sunset  colors :  he  went  back  to  it 
therefore  in  the  England  series,  and  painted  it  again  with  his 
new  power.  The  same  hills  are  there,  the  same  shadows,  the 
same  cows, — they  had  stood  in  his  mind,  on  the  same  spot,  for 
twenty  years, — the  same  boat,  the  same  rocks,  only  the  copse 
is  cut  away — it  interfered  with  the  masses  of  his  color :  some 
figures  are  introduced  bathing,  and  what  was  grey,  and  feeble 
gold  in  the  first  drawing,  becomes  [)urple,  and  burning  rose- 
color  in  the  last. 

But  perhaps  one  of  the  most  curious  examples  is  in  the 
series  of  subjects  from  Winchelsea.  That  in  the  Liber 
Studioruin,  ''Winchelsea,  Sussex,"  bears  date  1812,  and  its 
figui'es  consist  of  a  soldier  speaking  to  a  woman,  who  is  resting 
on  the  bank  beside  the  road.  There  is  another  small  subject, 
with  Winchelsea  in  the  distance,  of  which  the  engraving  bears 
date  1817.  It  has  tioo  women  with  bundles,  and  two  soldiers 
toilmg  along  the  embankment  in  the  plain,  and  a  baggage 
waggon  in  the  distance.  Neither  of  these  seems  to  have 
satisfied  him,  and  at  last  he  did  another  for  the  England  series, 
of  which  the  engi-;iving  bears  date  1830.  There  is  now  a 
regiment  on  tlie  march  ;  the  baggiige  waggon  is  there,  having 
2(>t  no  faither  on  in  the  thirteen  years,  but  one  of  the  women 
is  tired,  and  lias  fainted  on  the  bank  ;  another  is  supporting 
her  against  hei'  bundle,  and  giving  her  drink  ;  a  third  sym- 
l)athetic  vvoman  is  added,  and  the  two  soldiers  have  stopped, 
and  one  is  drinking  i'rom  his  canteen 


4fl  PRE-RArUAKLITISli. 

Nor  is  it  merely  of  entire  scenes,  or  of  particular  incidents, 
that  Turner's  memory  is  thus  tenacious.  The  slightest  pas- 
sages of  color  or  ari-angement  that  have  pleased  him — the 
fork  of  a  Lough,  the  casting  of  a  shadow,  the  fracture  of  a 
Btone — will  be  taken  up  again  and  again,  and  strangely 
worked  into  new  relations  with  other  thoughts.  There  is  a 
4Wigle  sketch  from  nature  in  one  of  the  portfolios  at  Farnley, 
of  a  common  wood-walk  on  the  estate,  which  has  furnished 
passages  to  no  fewer  than  three  of  the  most  elaborate  com- 
positions in  the  Liber  Studiorum. 

I  am  thus  tedious  in  dwelling  on  Turner's  powers  of  me- 
mory, because  I  wish  it  to  be  thoroughly  seen  how  all  his 
greatness,  all  his  infinite  luxuriance  of  invention,  depends 
on  his  taking  jDossession  of  everything  that  he  sees, — on  bis 
grasping  all,  and  losing  hold  of  nothing, — on  his  forgetting 
himself,  and  forgetting  nothing  else.  I  wish  it  to  be  under- 
stood how  every  great  man  paints  what  he  sees  or  did  see, 
his  greatness  being  indeed  little  else  than  his  intense  sense  of 
fact.  And  thus  Pre-Raphaelitism  and  Raphaelitism,  and 
Turnerism,  are  all  one  and  the  same,  so  far  as  education  can 
influence  them.  They  are  difierent  in  their  choice,  difierent 
in  their  faculties,  but  all  the  same  in  this,  that  Raphael  himself, 
so  far  as  he  was  great,  and  all  who  preceded  or  followed  him 
who  ever  were  great,  became  so  by  painting  the  truths  around 
them  as  they  apj:)eared  to  each  man's  own  mind,  not  as  he 
had  been  taught  to  see  them,  except  by  the  God  who  made 
both  him  and  them. 

There  is,  however,  one  more  characteristic  of  Turner's 
second  period,  on  which  I  have  still  to  dwell,  especially  with 
reference  to  what  has  been  above  advanced  respecting  the 
fallacy  of  overtoil ;  namely,  the  magnificent  ease  with  wliich 
all  is  done  when  it  is  successfully  done.  For  there  are  one 
or  two  drawings  of  this  time  which  are  7iot  done  easily. 
Turner  had  in  these  set  himself  to  do  a  fine  thing  to  exhii.>it 


(MIK-RAPIIAKMTISM.  40 

his  powers  ;  in  tlie  eoininon  iilirase,  to  excel  liimself ;  so  sure 
'.IS  he  does  this,  the  work  is  a  faihire.  The  worst  tlrawiiigs 
that  liave  ever  come  from  his  hands  are  some  of  this  second 
period,  on  which  he  lias  spent  much  time  and  laborious 
thought ;  drawings  filled  with  incident  from  one  side  to  the 
other,  with  skies  stippled  into  morbid  blue,  and  warm  lights 
set  against  them  in  violent  contrast;  one  of  Bamborough 
Castle,  a  large  Avatei'-color,  may  be  named  as  an  example. 
But  the  truly  noble  works  are  those  in  which,  without  effort, 
he  has  expressed  his  thoughts  as  they  came,  and  forgotien 
himself;  and  in  these  tlie  outpouring  of  invention  is  not  less 
miraculous  than  the  swiftness  and  obedience  of  the  mighty 
hand  that  expresses  it.  Any  one  Avho  examines  the  drawings 
may  see  the  evidence  of  this  facility,  in  the  strange  freshness 
and  sharpness  of  every  touch  of  color ;  but  when  the  multi- 
tude of  delicate  touches,  with  which  all  the  aerial  tones  are 
worked,  is  taken  into  consideration,  it  would  still  appear 
impossible  that  the  drawing  could  have  been  completed  with 
ease,  unless  we  had  direct  evidence  in  the  matter:  fortunately, 
it  is  not  w^anting.  There  is  a  drawing  in  Mi*.  Fawkes's  col- 
lection of  a  man-ofwar  taking  in  stores:  it  is  of  the  usual 
size  of  those  of  the  England  series,  about  sixteen  inches  by 
eleven  :  it  does  not  appear  one  of  the  most  highly  finished, 
but  is  still  farther  removed  from  slightness.  The  hull  of  a 
first-rate  occupies  nearly  one-half  of  the  i)icture  on  the  right, 
her  bows  towards  the  spectator,  seen  in  sharp  perspective 
from  stem  to  stern,  witli  all  her  portholes,  guns,  anchors,  and 
lower  rigging  elaborately  detailed  ;  there  are  two  other  sliijis 
of  the  line  in  tlie  middle  distance,  drawn  witli  equal  precision; 
a  noble  breezy  sea  dancing  against  their  broad  bows,  full  of 
delicate  drawing  in  its  Avaves ;  a  store-ship  beneath  the  hull 
of  the  larger  vessel,  and  several  other  boats,  and  a  compli- 
cated cloudy  skj.  Tt  might  appear  no  small  exertion  of  mind 
to  draw  the  detail  of  all  this  shipping  down  to  the  smallest 

3 


50  l'!JE-liArnAELI7ISM, 

••opes,  from  meiiioi}-,  in  the  drawing-room  of  a  mansion  in  the 
middle  of  Yorkshire,  even  if  considerable  time  liad  been 
given  for  the  eftort.  But  Mr.  Fawkes  sat  beside  the  painter 
from  the  first  stroke  to  the  hist.  Turner  took  a  piece  of  blank 
paper  one  morning  after  breakfast,  outlined  his  ships,  dnished 
the  drawing  in  three  liours,  and  went  out  to  shoot. 

Let  this  single  tact  be  quietly  meditated  upon  by  our  ordi 
nary  painters,  and  they  will  see  tlie  truth  of  what  was  abovti 
asserted, — tliat  if  a  great  thing  can  be  done  at  all,  it  can  be 
done  easily ;  and  let  them  not  torment  themselves  with 
twisting  of  compositions  this  way  and  that,  and  repeating, 
and  experimenting,  and  scene-shifting.  If  a  man  can  compose 
at  all,  he  can  compose  at  once,  or  rather  he  must  compose  in 
spite  of  himself.  And  this  is  the  reason  of  that  silence  which 
I  have  kept  in  most  of  my  works,  on  the  subject  of  Compo 
sition.  Many  ciitics,  especially  the  architects,  have  found 
fault  w  ith  me  for  not  "  teaching  people  how  to  arrange 
masses  ;"  for  not  "  attributing  sufficient  importance  to  com- 
position." Alas!  I  attribute  far  more  importance  to  it  than 
they  do ; — so  much  importance,  that  I  should  just  as  soon 
think  of  sitting  down  to  teacli  a  man  how  to  wi'ite  a  Divina 
Commedia,  or  King  Lear,  as  how  to  "  compose,"  in  the  true 
sense,  a  single  building  or  picture.  The  marvellous  stupidity 
of  this  age  of  lecturers  is,  that  they  do  not  see  that  what  they 
call  "principles  of  composition,"  are  mere  pi-inciples  of 
common  sense  in  everything,  as  well  as  in  i>ictures  and  build- 
ings;— A  picture  is  to  have  a  principal  light?  Yes;  and  so 
a  dinner  is  to  have  a  piincipal  dish,  and  an  oration  a  [)riiu;ipa) 
l)oint,  and  an  air  of  nmsic  a  i)rincipal  note,  and  every  man  a 
principal  object.  A  picture  is  to  have  harmony  of  relation 
among  its  parts  'i  Yes  ;  and  so  is  a  speech  well  uttered,  and 
an  action  well  ordered,  and  a  company  well  chosen,  and  a 
ragout  well  mixed.  Composition  !  As  if  a  man  were  not 
comjjosing  every  moment  of  his  life,  well  or  ill.  and  would 


IMJE-KAl'llAKl.lllS.M.  51 

not  tlo  it  in.stinclively  in  his  picture  as  well  as  elsew  lieie,  if  he 
could.  (Composition  of  this  lower  or  conunon  kind  is  of 
exactly  the  same  imi»ortance  in  a  picture  that  it  is  in  any 
thing  else, — no  more.  It  is  well  that  a  man  should  say  what 
he  has  to  say  in  good  order  and  sec^uence,  but  the  main  thing 
is  to  say  it  truly.  And  yet  we  go  on  preaching  to  our  pupils 
as  if  to  have  a  principal  light  was  every  thing,  and  so  cover 
our  academy  walls  with  Shacabac  feasts,  wherein  the  courses 
are  indeed  well  ordered,  but  the  dishes  emj)ty. 

It  is  not,  however,  only  in  invention  that  men  overwoik 
themselves,  but  in  execution  also;  and  here  I  have  a  word  to 
say  to  the  Pre-Ilaphaelites  specially.  They  are  working  loo 
hard.  There  is  evidence  in  fiailing  portions  of  their  pictures, 
showing  that  they  have  wrought  so  long  upou^them  that  thoir 
very  sight  has  tailed  for  weariness,  and  that  the  hand  refused 
any  more  to  obey  the  heart.  And,  besides  this,  thei'e  are 
certain  qualities  of  drawing  which  they  miss  from  over- 
carefulness.  For,  let  them  be  assured,  there  is  a  great  truth 
lurking  in  that  connnon  desire  of  men  to  see  things  done  in 
what  they  call  a  "masterly,"  or  "bold,"  or  "  bi'oad,"  manner: 
a  truth  oppix'ssed  and  abused,  like  almost  every  other  in  this 
world,  but  an  eternal  one  nevertheless  ;  and  wliatever  mis- 
chief may  have  followed  from  men's  looking  for  iiothing  else 
but  this  facility  of  execution,  and  supposing  that  a  picture 
was  assiux'dly  all  right  jf  only  it  were  done  with  broad  dashes 
of  the  brush,  still  llie  truth  remains  the  same: — that  because 
it  is  nut  intended  that  men  sliall  torment  or  weary  themselves 
with  any  eaithly  labor,  it  is  appointed  that  the  noblest  results 
sliould  only  l)e  attainable  l)y  a  certain  ease  and  decision  of 
manipulation.  I  only  wish  people  understood  this  much  ol' 
scidpture,  as  wi'll  as  of  painting,  and  could  see  that  tlic  lini'ly 
Hnished  statue  is,  in  nlncly-niue  cases  out  of  a  liundred,  a  fai 
more  \ul"ar  work  than  tliat  which  shows  rou<xh  signs  of  the 
right  iiand  laid  to  the  workman's  hammer:   but  at  all  events, 


52  rKK-UArilAEUTISM. 

ill  painting  it  is  felt  by  all  men,  and  justly  felt.  The  freedom 
of  the  lines  of  nature  can  only  be  rej)resonted  by  a  similar 
freedom  in  the  hand  that  follows  them  ;  there  are  curves  in 
the  flow  of  the  hair,  and  in  the  form  of  the  features,  and  in 
the  muscular  outline  of  the  body,  which  can  in  no  wise  hi 
caught  but  by  a  sympathetic  freedom  in  the  stroke  of  the 
pencil.  I  do  not  care  what  example  is  taken,  be  it  the  most 
subtle  and  careful  work  of  Leonardo  himself,  there  will  be 
found  a  play  and  power  and  ease  in  the  outlines,  which  no 
slow  eifort  could  ever  imitate.  And  if  the  Pre-Raphaelitea 
do  not  understand  how  this  kind  of  power,  in  its  highest 
perfection,  may  be  united  with  the  most  severe  rendering  of 
all  other  orders  of  truth,  and  especially  of  those  with  which 
they  themselves  have  most  sympathy,  let  them  look  at  the 
drawings  of  John  Lewis. 

These  then  are  the  principal  lessons  which  we  have  to  learn 
from  Turner,  in  his  second  or  central  j^eriod  of  labor.  There 
is  one  more,  however,  to  be  received ;  and  that  is  a  Avarning ; 
for  tovi^ards  the  close  of  it,  what  with  doing  small  conventional 
vignettes  for  publishers,  making  showy  drawings  from  sketches 
taken  by  other  people  of  places  he  had  never  seen,  and  touch- 
ing up  the  bad  engravings  from  his  works  submitted  to  him 
almost  every  day, — engravings  utterly  destitute  of  animation, 
and  which  had  to  be  raised  into  a  specious  brilliancy  by 
scratching  them  over  with  white,  spotty,  lights,  he  gradually 
got  inured  to  many  conventionalities,  and  even  falsities ;  and 
having  trusted  for  ten  or  twelve  years  almost  entirely  to  his 
memory  and  invention,  living  I  believe  mostly  in  London,  and 
receiving  a  new  sensation  only  from  the  burning  of  the 
Houses  of  Parliament,  he  painted  many  pictures  between 
1830  and  1840  altogether  unworthy  of  him.  But  he  was  not 
thus  to  close  his  career. 

In  the  summer  either  of  1840  or  1841,  he  undertook  another 
journey  into  Switzerland.     It  was  then  at  least  forty  years 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM.  6S 

since  he  had  first  seen  the  Alps ;  (the  source  of  the  Arveron, 
in  Mr.  Fawkes's  collection,  which  could  not  have  been  painted 
till  he  had  seen  the  thing  itself,  bears  date  1800,)  and  the 
direction  of  his  journey  in  1840  marks  his  fond,  memory  of 
that  earliest  one ;  for,  if  we  look  over  the  Sudss  studies  and 
drawings  executed  in  his  first  period,  we  shall  be  struck  witli 
his  fondness  for  the  pass  of  the  St.  Gothard  ;  the  most  elaborate 
drawing  in  the  Farnley  collection  is  one  of  the  Lake  of  Lucerne 
from  Fluelen  ;  and,  counting  the  Liber  Studiorum  subjects, 
there  are,  to  my  knowledge,  six  compositions  taken  at  the 
same  period  from  the  pass  of  St.  Gothard,  and,  probably, 
several  others  are  in  existence.  The  valleys  of  Sallenche,  and 
Chamouni,  and  Lake  of  Geneva,  are  the  only  other  Swiss  scenes 
which  seem  to  have  made  very  profound  impressions  on  him. 

lie  returned  in  1841  to  Lucerne  ;  walked  up  Mont  Pilate 
on  foot,  crossed  the  St.  Gothard,  and  returned  by  Lausanne 
and  Geneva,  lie  made  a  large  number  of  colored  sketches  on 
this  journey,  and  realised  several  of  tliem  on  his  return.  The 
drawings  thus  i)roduced  are  different  from  all  that  had  pre- 
ceded them,  and  are  the  first  which  belong  definitely  to  what 
I  shall  henceforth  call  his  Third  period. 

The  perfect  repose  of  his  youth  had  returned  to  his  mind, 
while  the  faculties  of  imagination  and  execution  appeared  in 
renewed  strength ;  all  conventionality  being  done  away  with 
by  the  force  of  the  impression  which  he  had  received  from  the 
Alps,  after  his  long  sepai'ation  from  tliem.  The  drawings  are 
marked  by  a  peculiar  largeness  and  simplicity  of  thought : 
most  of  them  by  deep  serenity,  passing  into  melancholy ;  all 
by  a  richness  of  color,  such  as  he  had  never  before  conceived. 
They,  and  the  works  done  in  following  years,  bear  the 
same  relation  to  those  of  the  rest  of  his  life  that  the  colors  of 
sunset  do  to  those  of  the  day ;  and  will  be  recognised,  in  a 
few  years  more,  as  the  noblest  landscapes  ever  yet  conceives' 
by  human  intellect. 


04  PRE-RAPHAEIJTISM 

Siicli  lias  been  the  career  of  tlie  greatest  painter  of  this 
ceiiiur} .  i\bd\iy  a  century  may  pass  away  before  there  rise? 
such  anotlier ;  but  wliat  greatness  any  among  us  may  be  capa- 
ble of,  will,  at  least,  be  best  attained  by  following  in  his  path; 
by  beginning  in  all  (piiL'tness  and  hopefulness  to  use  whatever 
powers  we  may  j)ossess  to  represent  the  things  around  us  aa 
as  we  see  and  feel  them ;  trusting  to  the  close  of  life  to  give 
the  perfect  crown  to  the  course  of  its  labors,  and  knowing 
assuredly  that  the  determination  of  the  degree  in  which 
watchfulness  is  to  be  exalted  into  invention,  rests  with  a 
higher  will  than  our  own.  And,  if  not  greatness,  at  least  a 
certain  good,  is  thus  to  be  achieved ;  for  though  I  have  above 
spoken  of  the  mission  of  the  more  humble  artist,  as  if  it  were 
merely  to  be  subservient  to  that  of  the  antiquarian  or  the  man 
of  science,  there  is  an  ulterior  aspect  in  which  it  is  not  sub- 
servient, but  superior.  Eveiy  archaeologist,  every  natvxral 
philosopher,  knows  that  there  is  a  jteculiar  rigidity  of  mind 
brought  on  by  long  devotion  to  logical  and  analytical  incpiiries. 
Weak  men,  giving  themselves  to  such  studies,  are  utterly 
hardened  by  them,  and  become  incapable  of  understanding 
anything  noblei',  or  even  of  feeling  the  value  of  the  i-esults  to 
which  they  lead.  But  even  the  best  men  are  in  a  sort  ?njured 
by  them,  and  pay  a  definite  price,  as  in  most  other  matters,  for 
definite  advantages.  They  gain  a  peculiar  strength,  but  lose 
in  tenderness,  elasticity,  and  impressibility.  The  man  who 
has  gone,  hannner  in  hand,  over  the  surface  of  a  romantic 
country,  feels  no  longer,  in  the  mountain  ranges  he  has  so 
laboriously  explored,  the  sublimity  or  mystery  with  which 
they  were  veiled  when  he  first  beheld  them,  and  with  which 
they  are  adorned  in  the  mind  of  the  passing  traveller.  In  bia 
more  informed  conception,  they  arrange  themselves  like  a  dis 
sected  model:  where  another  man  would  be  awe-struck  by 
the  magnificence  of  the  precipice,  he  sees  nothing  but  the 
emergence  of  a  fossiliferous  rock,  familiarised  already  to  his 


PKE-IIAPHAELITISM.  5ft 

Im.'igin.'itioii  as  extendinir  in  u  sliallcnv  stratuin,  o\  er  a  perliape 
uninteresting  district ;  w  'lere  tlie  unlearned  spectator  would 
be  touclied  with  strong  emotion  l)y  the  asjjcct  of  the  snowy 
suniinits  which  I'ise  in  the  distance,  he  sees  only  the  culrauiat' 
ing  points  of  a  nietaniorphic  formation,  with  an  uncomfortable 
Web  of  t:\n-like  fissui'es  radiating,  in  his  imagination,  through 
their  centres. "•=  That  in  tlie  grasp  he  has  obtained  of  the  inner 
relations  of  all  these  things  to  the  universe,  and  to  man,  that 
in  the  views  which  have  been  opened  to  him  of  natural 
energies  such  as  no  human  mind  would  have  ventured  to  con- 
ceive, and  of  past  states  of  being,  eacli  in  some  new  way  bear- 
ing witness  to  the  unity  of  purpose  and  everlastingly  consistent 
l)rovidence  of  the  jNIaker  of  all  things,  he  has  received  reward 
well  worthy  the  sacrifice,  I  would  not  for  an  instant  deny;  but 
the  sense  of  the  loss  is  not  less  painful  to  him  if  his  mind  be 
rightly  constituted  ;  and  ii  w^ouu;  oe  with  infinite  gratitude 
that  lie  would  regard  the  man,  who,  letaining  in  his  delineation 
of  natural  scenery  a  fidelity  to  the  f\cts  of  science  so  rigid  as 
to  make  his  work  at  once  acceptable  and  credible  to  the  most 
sternly  critical  intellect,  should  yet  invest  its  features  again 
with  the  sweet  veil  of  their  daily  aspect ;  sliould  make  them 
dazzling  with  the  splendor  of  wandering  light,  and  involve 
them  in  the  unsearchableness  of  stormy  obscurity  ;  should 
restore  to  the  divided  anatomy  its  visible  vitality  of  o[)eratiou, 

*  Tliis  slate  of  mind  appears  to  have  been  tlie  only  one  which  AVoidswoilh 
had  been  ablp  to  discern  in  men  of  science;  and  in  disdain  of  which,  ho  wmlo 
'hat  ahort-sightod  passn'^'e  in  the  Excursion,  Book  III.  1.  1G5  — 100.,  which  is, 

think,  the  o'dy  one  in  ihe  whole  range  of  his  works  wliich  his  true  frier.d,^ 
would  have  desired  to  see  blotted  out.  What  else  has  been  found  fault  will 
'/»  feeble  or  superfluous,  is  not  so  in  the  intense  distinctive  relief  which  it 
gives  to  his  ci.araeier.  Hut  these  lines  are  written  in  mere  ignorance  of  the 
matter  the}'  treat;  in  mere  want  of  sympathy  with  the  men  they  describe; 
for,  observe,  thougli  the  passage  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  Solitay,  it  it 
fuUy  confirm-;'!,  and  even  rendered  more  scornful,  by  the  apeecb  wLiol 
Gallows 


56  PRE-EAPIIAELITISM. 

clothe  naked  crags  with  soft  forests,  enrich  the  mountain  ruins 
with  blight  pastures,  and  lead  the  thoughts  from  the  mono 
tonous  recurrence  of  tlie  plienomena  of  tlie  pliysicai  world,  U 
the  SMTftet  interests  and  sorrows  of  humau  life  and  deaih. 


THE    END. 


THE 


PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND. 


iLecturrs  gibcn  in  ©xfortr. 


BY 


JOHN    RUSKIN,    D.C.L.,   LL.D., 

HONORARY    STUDENT    OF   CHRIST    CHURCH,    AND    HONORARY    FELLOW   OF 
CORPUS-CHRISTI    COLLEGE, 


DURING   HIS 


SECOND   TENURE  OF  THE  SLADE  PROFESSORSHIP. 


NEW    YORK: 

JOHN    WILEY   AND   SONS, 

53  East  Tenth  Stkekt, 

Secoud  door  west  or  Broadway, 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE   I. 

PAGB 

The  Pleasures  of  Learning.      Bertha  to  Osburga  ....     5 

LECTURE   IL 
The  Pleasures  of  Faith.      Alfred  to  the  Confessor  .  ...  31 

LECTURE   in. 
The  Pleasures  of  Deed.       Alfred  to  Coeur  de  Lion  ...  61 

LECTURE    IV. 
The  Pleasures  of  Fancy.     Coeur  de  Lion  to  Elizabeth   .   .  91 


LECTURE    I. 


THE    PLEASURES    OF    LEARNING. 

bertha  to  Osburm. 


LECTURE  I. 
THE   PLEASURES   OF    LEARNING. 


BERTHA   TO    OSBURGA. 

IN  the  short  review  of  the  present  state  of  English 
Art,  given  you  last  year,  I  left  necessarily  many 
points  untouched,  and  others  unexplained.  The  sev- 
enth lecture,  which  I  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  read 
aloud,  furnished  you  with  some  of  the  corrective  state- 
ments of  which,  whether  spoken  or  not,  it  was 
extremely  desirable  that  you  should  estimate  the  bal- 
ancing weight.  These  I  propose  in  the  present  course 
farther  to  illustrate,  and  to  arrive  with  you  at,  I  hope, 
a  just  —  you  would  not  wish  it  to  be  a  flattering  — 
estimate  of  the  conditions  of  our  English  artistic  life, 
past  and  present,  in  order  that  with  due  allowance  for 
them  we  may  determine,  with  some  security,  what 
those  of  us  who  have  faculty  ought  to  do,  and  those 
who  have  sensibility,  to  admire. 

2.   In  thus  rightly  doing  and  feeling,  you  will  find 
summed  a  wider  duty,  and  granted  a  greater  power, 

7 


8  The  Pleasures  of  Lear7img. 

than  the  moral  philosophy  at  this  moment  current  with 
you  has  ever  conceived  ;  and  a  prospect  opened  to  you 
besides,  of  such  a  Future  for  England  as  you  may  both 
hopefully  and  proudly  labour  for  with  your  hands,  and 
those  of  you  who  are  spared  to  the  ordinary  term  of 
human  life,  even  see  with  your  eyes,  when  all  this 
tumult  of  vain  avarice  and  idle  pleasure,  into  which  you 
have  been  plunged  at  birth,  shall  have  passed  into  its 
appointed  perdition. 

3.  I  wish  that  you  would  read  for  introduction  to  the 
lectures  I  have  this  year  arranged  for  you,  that  on  the 
Future  of  England,  which  I  gave  to  the  cadets  at 
Woolwich  in  the  first  year  of  my  Professorship  here, 
1869;  and  which  is  now  placed  as  the  main  conclusion 
of  the  "  Crown  of  Wild  Olive "  :  and  with  it,  very 
attentively,  the  close  of  my  inaugural  lecture  given 
here  ;  for  the  matter,  no  less  than  the  tenor  of  which, 
I  was  reproved  by  all  my  friends,  as  irrelevant  and  ill- 
judged  ; —  which,  nevertheless,  is  of  all  the  pieces  of 
teaching  I  have  ever  given  from  this  chair,  the  most 
pregnant  and  essential  to  whatever  studies,  whether  of 
Art  or  Science,  you  may  pursue,  in  this  place  or  else- 
where, during  your  lives. 

The  opening  words  of  that  passage  I  will  take  leave 
to  read  to  you  again,  —  for  they  must  still  be  the 
ground  of  whatever  help  I  can  give  you,  worth  your 
acceptance. 

"There  is  a  destiny  now  possible  to  us  —  the  highest 


Bertha  to   Oshicr^a 


^> 


ever  set  before  a  nation  to  be  accepted  or  refused.  We 
arc  still  undegenerate  in  race  :  a  race  mingled  of  the 
best  northern  blood.  We  are  not  yet  dissolute  in  tem- 
per, but  still  have  the  firmness  to  govern,  and  the  grace 
to  obey.  We  have  been  taught  a  religion  of  pure 
mercy,  which  we  must  either  now  finally  betray,  or 
learn  to  defend  by  fulfilling.  And  we  are  rich  in  an 
inheritance  of  honour,  bequeathed  to  us  through  a 
thousand  years  of  noble  history,  which  it  should  be  our 
daily  thirst  to  increase  with  splendid  avarice ;  so  that 
Englishmen,  if  it  be  a  sin  to  covet  honour,  should  be 
the  most  offending  souls  alive.  Within  the  last  feW 
years  we  have  had  the  laws  of  natural  science  opened 
to  us  with  a  rapidity  which  has  been  blinding  by  its 
brightness  ;  and  means  of  transit  and  communication 
given  to  us,  which  have  made  but  one  kingdom  of  the 
habitable  globe. 

"One  kingdom;  —  but  who  is  to  be  its  king.''  Is 
there  to  be  no  king  in  it,  think  you,  and  every  man  to 
do  that  which  is  right  in  his  own  eyes }  Or  only  kings 
of  terror,  and  the  obscene  empires  of  Mammon  and 
Belial .''  Or  will  you,  youths  of  England,  make  your 
country  again  a  royal  throne  of  kings  ;  a  sceptred  isle  ; 
for  all  the  world  a  source  of  light,  a  centre  of  peace ; 
mistress  of  Learning  and  of  the  Arts  ; — faithful  guard- 
ian of  great  memories  in  the  midst  of  irreverent  and 
ephemeral  visions  —  faithful  servant  of  time-tried  prin- 
ciples, under   temptation  from  fond  experiments    and 


lo  The  Pkasures  of  Learnmg. 

licentious  desires ;  and  amidst  the  cruel  and  clamorous 
jealousies  of  the  nations,  worshipped  in  her  strange 
valour,  of  goodwill  towards  men?" 

The  fifteen  years  that  have  passed  since  I  spoke 
these  words  must,  I  think,  have  convinced  some  of  my 
immediate  hearers  that  the  need  for  such  an  appeal 
was  more  pressing  than  they  then  imagined;  —  while 
they  have  also  more  and  more  convinced  me  myself 
that  the  ground  I  took  for  it  was  secure,  and  that  the 
youths  and  girls  now  entering  on  the  duties  of  active 
life  are  able  to  accept  and  fulfil  the  hope  I  then  held 
out  to  them. 

In  which  assurance  I  ask  them  to-day  to  begin  the 
examination  with  me,  very  earnestly,  of  the  question 
laid  before  you  in  that  seventh  of  my  last  year's  lec- 
tures, whether  London,  as  it  is  now,  be  indeed  the 
natural,  and  therefore  the  heaven-appointed  outgrowth 
of  the  inhabitation,  these  1800  years,  of  the  valley  of 
the  Thames  by  a.  progressively  instructed  and  disci- 
plined people  ;  or  if  not,  in  what  measure  and  manner 
the  aspect  and  spirit  of  the  great  city  may  be  possibly 
altered  by  your  acts  and  thoughts. 

In  my  introduction  to  the  Economist  of  Xenophon  I 
said  that  every  fairly  educated  European  boy  or  girl 
ought  to  learn  the  history  of  five  cities,  —  Athens, 
Rome,  Venice,  Florence,  and  London ;  that  of  London 
including,  or  at  least  compelling  in  parallel  study,  some 
knowledge  also  of  the  history  of  Paris. 


Bertha  to   Osbtirga.  1 1 

A  few  words  are  enough  to  explain  the  reasons  for 
this  choice.  The  history  of  Athens,  rightly  told,  in- 
cludes all  that  need  be  known  of  Greek  religion  and 
arts  ;  that  of  Rome,  the  victory  of  Christianity  over 
Paganism  ;  those  of  Venice  and  Florence  sum  the 
essential  facts  respecting  the  Christian  arts  of  Paint- 
ing, Sculpture,  and  Music  ;  and  that  of  London,  in  her 
sisterhood  with  Paris,  the  development  of  Christian 
Chivalry  and  Philosophy,  with  their  exponent  art  of 
Gothic  architecture. 

Without  the  presumption  of  forming  a  distinct  de- 
sign, I  yet  hoped  at  the  time  when  this  division  of 
study  was  suggested,  with  the  help  of  my  pupils,  to 
give  the  outlines  of  their  several  histories  during  my 
work  in  Oxford.  Variously  disappointed  and  arrested, 
alike  by  difticultics  of  investigation  and  failure  of 
strength,  I  may  yet  hope  to  lay  down  for  you,  begin- 
ning with  your  own  metropolis,  some  of  the  lines  of 
thought  in  following  out  which  such  a  task  might  be 
most  effectively  accomplished. 

You  observe  that  I  speak  of  architecture  as  the  chief 
exponent  of  the  feelings  both  of  the  French  and  Eng- 
lish races.  Together  with  it,  however,  most  important 
evidence  of  character  is  given  by  the  illumination  of 
manuscripts,  and  by  some  forms  of  jewellery  and  met- 
allurgy :  and  my  purpose  in  this  course  of  lectures  is 
to  illustrate  by  all  these  arts  the  phases  of  national 
character  which  it  is  impossible  that  historians  should 


12  The  Pleasures  of  Learning. 

estimate,  or  even  observe,  with  accuracy,  unless  they 
are  cognizant  of  excellence  in  the  aforesaid  modes  of 
structural  and  ornamental  craftsmanship. 

In  one  respect,  as  indicated  by  the  title  chosen  for 
this  course,  I  have  varied  the  treatment  of  their  subject 
from  that  adopted  in  all  my  former  books.  Hitherto,  I 
have  always  endeavoured  to  illustrate  the  personal 
temper  and  skill  of  the  artist ;  holding  the  wishes  or 
taste  of  his  spectators  at  small  account,  and  saying  of 
Turner  you  ought  to  like  him,  and  of  Salvator,  you 
ought  not,  etc.,  etc.,  without  in  the  least  considering 
what  the  genius  or  instinct  of  the  spectator  might  other- 
wise demand,  or  approve.  Biit  in  the  now  attempted 
sketch  of  Christian  history,  I  have  approached  every 
question  from  the  people's  side,  and  examined  the  na- 
ture, not  of  the  special  faculties  by  which  the  work 
was  produced,  but  of  the  general  instinct  by  which  it 
was  asked  for,  and  enjoyed.  Therefore  I  thought  the 
proper  heading  for  these  papers  should  represent  them 
as  descriptive  of  the  Plcasiars  of  England,  rather  than 
of  its  Arts. 

And  of  these  pleasures,  necessarily,  the  leading  one 
was  that  of  Learning,  in  the  sense  of  receiving  instruc- 
tion ;  —  a  pleasure  totally  separate  from  that  of  finding 
out  things  for  yourself, — and  an  extremely  sweet  and 
sacred  pleasure,  when  you  know  how  to  seek  it,  and 
receive. 

On  which   I  am  the  more  disposed,  and  even  com- 


Bertha  to   Osburga.  13 

pelled,  here  to  insist,  because  your  modern  ideas  of 
Development  imply  that  you  must  all  turn  out  what 
you  are  to  be,  and  find  out  what  you  are  to  know,  for 
yourselves,  by  the  inevitable  operation  of  your  anterior 
affinities  and  inner  consciences:  —  whereas  the  old  idea 
of  education  was  that  the  baby  material  of  you,  how- 
ever accidentally  or  inevitably  born,  was  at  least  to  be 
by  external  force,  and  ancestral  knowledge,  bred  ;  and 
treated  by  its  Fathers  and  Tutors  as  a  plastic  vase,  to 
be  shaped  or  mannered  as  tJicy  chose,  not  as  it  chose, 
and  filled,  when  its  form  was  well  finished  and  baked, 
with  sweetness  of  sound  doctrine,  as  with  Hyola  honey, 
or  Arabian  spikenard. 

Without  debating  how  far  these  two  modes  of  acquir- 
ing knowledge  —  finding  out,  and  being  told  —  may 
severally  be  good,  and  in  perfect  instruction  combined, 
I  have  to  point  out  to  you  that,  broadly,  Athens,  Rome, 
and  Florence  are  self-taught,  and  internally  developed  ; 
while  all  the  Gothic  races,  without  any  exception,  but 
especially  those  of  London  and  Paris,  are  afterwards 
taught  by  these  ;  and  had,  therefore,  when  they  chose 
to  accept  it,  the  delight  of  being  instructed,  without 
trouble  or  doubt,  as  fast  as  they  could  read  or  imitate  ; 
and  brought  forward  to  the  point  where  their  own 
northern  instincts  might  wholesomely  superimpose  or 
graft  some  national  ideas  upon  these  sound  instruc- 
tions. Read  over  what  I  said  on  this  subject  in  the 
third  of  my  lectures  last  year  (page  79),  and  simplify 


14  The  Pleasures  of  Learning. 

that  already  brief  statement  further,  by  fastening  in 
your  mind  Carlyle's  general  symbol  of  the  best  attain- 
ments of  northern  religious  sculpture,  —  "  three  whale- 
cubs  combined  by  boiling,"  and  reflecting  that  the 
mental  history  of  all  northern  European  art  is  the 
modification  of  that  graceful  type,  under  the  orders  of 
the  Athena  of  Homer  and  Phidias. 

And  this  being  quite  indisputably  the  broad  fact  of 
the  matter,  I  greatly  marvel  that  your  historians  never, 
so  far  as  I  have  read,  think  of  proposing  to  you  the 
question  —  what  you  might  have  made  of  yourselves 
without  the  help  of  Homer  and  Phidias :  what  sort  of 
beings  the  Saxon  and  the  Celt,  the  Frank  and  the 
Dane,  might  have  been  by  this  time,  untouched  by  the 
spear  of  Pallas,  unruled  by  the  rod  of  Agricola,  and 
sincerely  the  native  growth,  pure  of  root,  and  ungrafted 
in  fruit  of  the  clay  of  Isis,  rock  of  Dovrefeldt,  and 
sands  of  Elbe  ?  Think  of  it,  and  think  chiefly  what 
form  the  ideas,  and  images,  of  your  natural  religion 
might  probably  have  taken,  if  no  Roman  missionary 
had  ever  passed  the  Alps  in  charity,  and  no  English 
king  in  pilgrimage. 

I  have  been  of  late  indebted  more  than  I  can  express 
to  the  friend  who  has  honoured  me  by  the  dedication 
of  his  recently  published  lectures  on  *  Older  England  ; ' 
and  whose  eager  enthusiasm  and  far  collected  learning 
have  enabled  me  for  the  first  time  to  assign  their  just 
meaning  and  value  to  the  ritual  and  imagery  of  Saxon 


Bertha  to   Osburga.  15 

devotion.  But  while  every  page  of  Mr.  Hodgett's 
book,  and,  I  may  gratefully  say  also,  every  sentence  of 
his  teaching,  has  increased  and  justified  the  respect  in 
which  I  have  always  been  by  my  own  feeling  disposed 
to  hold  the  mythologies  founded  on  the  love  and  knowl- 
edge of  the  natural  world,  I  have  also  been  led  by 
them  to  conceive,  far  more  forcibly  than  hitherto,  the 
power  which  the  story  of  Christianity  possessed,  first 
heard  through  the  wreaths  of  that  cloudy  superstition, 
in  the  substitution,  for  its  vaporescent  allegory,  of  a 
positive  and  literal  account  of  a  real  Creation,  and  an 
instantly  present,  omnipresent,  and  compassionate  God. 

Observe,  there  is  no  question  whatever  in  examining 
this  influence,  how  far  Christianity  itself  is  true,  or  the 
transcendental  doctrines  of  it  intelligible.  Those  who 
brought  you  the  story  of  it  believed  it  with  all  their 
souls  to  be  true,  —  and  the  effect  of  it  on  the  hearts  of 
your  ancestors  was  that  of  an  unquestionable,  infinitely 
lucid  message  straight  from  God,  doing  away  with  all 
difificulties,  grief,  and  fears  for  those  who  willingly 
received  it,  nor  by  any,  except  wilfully  and  obstinately 
vile  persons,  to  be,  by  any  possibility,  denied  or 
refused. 

And  it  was  precisely,  observe,  the  vivacity  and  joy 
with  which  the  main  fact  of  Christ's  life  was  accepted 
which  gave  the  force  and  wrath  to  the  controversies 
instantly  arising  about  its  nature. 

Those  controversies  vexed  and  shook,  but  never  un* 


1 6  The  Pleasures  of  Learning. 

dermined,  the  faith  they  strove  to  purify,  and  the  mirac- 
ulous presence,  errorless  precept,  and  loving  promises 
of  their  Lord  were  alike  undoubted,  alike  rejoiced  in, 
by  every  nation  that  heard  the  word  of  Apostles.  The 
Pelagian's  assertion  that  immortality  could  be  won  by 
man's  will,  and  the  Arian's  that  Christ  possessed  no 
more  than  man's  nature,  never  for  an  instant  —  or  in 
any  country  —  hindered  the  advance  of  the  moral  law 
and  intellectual  hope  of  Christianity.  Far  the  con- 
trary ;  the  British  heresy  concerning  Free  Will,  though 
it  brought  bishop  after  bishop  into  England  to  extin- 
guish it,  remained  an  extremely  healthy  and  active 
element  in  the  British  mind  down  to  the  day^  of  John 
Bunyan  and  the  guide  Great  Heart,  and  the  calmly 
Christian  justice  and  simple  human  virtue  of  Theodoric 
were  the  very  roots  and  first  burgeons  of  the  regenera- 
tion of  Italy.*  But  of  the  degrees  in  which  it  was 
possible  for  any  barbarous  nation  to  receive  during  the 
first  five  centuries,  either  the  spiritual  power  of  Chris- 
tianity itself,  or  the  instruction  in  classic  art  and 
science  which  accompanied  it,  you  cannot  rightly  judge, 
without  taking  the  pains,  and  they  will  not,  I  think,  be 

*Gibbon,  in  his  37th  chapter,  makes  Ulphilas  also  an  Arian,  but  might  have 
forborne,  with  grace,  his  own  definition  of  orthodoxy:  —  and  you  are  to  observe 
generally  that  at  this  time  the  teachers  who  admitted  the  inferiority  of  Christ  to 
the  Father  as  touching  his  Manhood,  were  often  counted  among  Arians,  but 
quite  falsely.  Christ's  own  words,  "  My  Father  is  greater  than  I,"  end  that 
controversy  at  once.  Arianism  consists  not  in  asserting  the  subjection  of  ths 
Son  to  the  Father,  but  in  denying  the  subjected  Divinity. 


Bertha  to    Osburga.  17 

irksome,  of  noticing  carefully,  and  fixing  permanently  in 
your  minds,  the  separating  characteristics  of  the  greater 
races,  both  in  those  who  learned  and  those  who  taught. 

Of  the  Huns  and  Vandals  we  need  not  speak.  They 
are  merely  forms  of  Punishment  and  Destruction.  Put 
them  out  of  your  minds  altogether,  and  remember  only 
the  names  of  the  immortal  nations,  which  abide  on 
their  native  rocks,  and  plough  their  unconquercd  plains, 
at  this  hour. 

Briefly,  in  the  north,  —  Briton,  Norman,  Frank,  Sax- 
on, Ostrogoth,  Lombard;  briefly,  in  the  south,  —  Tus- 
can, Roman,  Greek,  Syrian,  Egyptian,  Arabian. 

Now  of  these  races,  the  British  (I  avoid  the  word 
Celtic,  because  you  would  expect  me  to  say  Keltic ;  and 
I  don't  mean  to,  lest  you  should  be  wanting  me  next  to 
call  the  patroness  of  music  St.  Kekilia),  the  British, 
including  Breton,  Cornish,  Welsh,  Irish,  Scot,  and  Pict, 
are,  I  believe,  of  all  the  northern  races,  the  one  which 
has  deepest  love  of  external  nature;  —  and  the  richest 
inherent  gift  of  pure  music  and  song,  as  such ;  sepa- 
rated from  the  intellectual  gift  which  raises  song  into 
poetry.  They  are  naturally  also  religious,  and  for  some 
centuries  after  their  own  conversion  are  one  of  the 
chief  evangelizing  powers  in  Christendom.  But  they 
are  neither  apprehensive  nor  receptive  ;  —  they  cannot 
understand  the  classic  races,  and  learn  scarcely  any- 
thing from  them  ;  perhaps  better  so,  if  the  classic  races 
had  been  more  careful  to  understand  thctn. 


1 8  The  Pleasures  of  Lcarnhig. 

Next,  the  Norman  is  scarcely  more  apprehensive 
than  the  Celt,  but  he  is  more  constructive,  and  uses  to 
good  advantage  what  he  learns  from  the  Frank.  His 
main  characteristic  is  an  energy,  which  never  exhausts 
itself  in  vain  anger,  desire,  or  sorrow,  but  abides  and 
rules,  like  a  living  rock  :  —  where  he  wanders,  he  flows 
like  lava,  and  congeals  like  granite. 

Next,  I  take  in  this  first  sketch  the  Saxon  and  Frank 
together,  both  pre-eminently  apprehensive,  both  docile 
exceedingly,  imaginative  in  the  highest,  but  in  life 
active  more  than  pensive,  eager  in  desire,  swift  of 
invention,  keenly  sensitive  to  animal  beauty,  but  with 
difficulty  rational,  and  rarely,  for  the  future,  wise. 
Under  the  conclusive  name  of  Ostrogoth,  you  may 
class  whatever  tribes  are  native  to  Central  Germany, 
and  develope  themselves,  as  time  goes  on,  into  that 
power  of  the  German  Cassars  which  still  asserts  itself 
as  an  empire  against  the  licence  and  insolence  of  mod- 
ern republicanism,  —  of  which  races,  though  this  gen- 
eral name,  no  description  can  be  given  in  rapid  terms. 

And  lastly,  the  Lombards,  who,  at  the  time  we  have 
to  deal  with,  were  sternly  indocile,  gloomily  imagina- 
tive,—  of  almost  Norman  energy,  and  differing  from 
all  the  other  western  nations  chiefly  in  this  notable 
particular,  that  while  the  Celt  is  capable  of  bright  wit 
and  happy  play,  and  the  Norman,  Saxon,  and  Frank  all 
alike  delight  in  caricature,  the  Lombards,  like  the  Ara- 
bians,  never  jest. 


Bertha  to   Osburga.  19 

These,  briefly,  are  the  six  barbaric  nations  who  are 
to  be  taught  :  and  of  whose  native  arts  and  faculties, 
before  they  receive  any  tutorship  from  the  south,  I  find 
no  well-sifted  account  in  any  history  :  —  but  thus  much 
of  them,  collecting  your  own  thoughts  and  knowledge, 
you  may  easily  discern  —  they  were  all,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  Scots,  practical  workers  and  builders  in 
wood ;  and  those  of  them  who  had  coasts,  first  rate 
sea-boat  builders,  with  fine  mathematical  instincts  and 
practice  in  that  kind  far  developed,  necessarily  good 
sail-weaving,  and  sound  fur-stitching,  with  stout  iron- 
work of  nail  and  rivet ;  rich  copper  and  some  silver 
work  in  decoration  —  the  Celts  developing  peculiar 
gifts  in  linear  design,  but  wholly  incapable  of  drawing 
animals  or  figures;  —  the  Saxons  and  Franks  having 
enough  capacity  in  that  kind,  but  no  thought  of  at- 
tempting it  ;  the  Normans  and  Lombards  still  farther 
remote  from  any  such  skill.  More  and  more,  it  seems 
to  me  wonderful  that  under  your  British  block-temple, 
grimly  extant  on  its  pastoral  plain,  or  beside  the  first 
crosses  engraved  on  the  rock  at  Whithorn  —  you  Eng- 
lish and  Scuts  do  not  oftener  consider  what  you  might 
or  could  have  come  to,  left  to  yourselves. 

Next,  let  us  form  the  list  of  your  tutor  nations,  in 
whom  it  generally  pleases  you  to  look  at  nothing  but 
the  corruptions.  If  we  could  get  into  the  habit  of 
thinking  more  of  our  own  corruptions  and  more  of 
tJieir  virtues,  we  should  have  a  better  chance  of  learn- 


20  The  Pleasures  of  Learning. 

ing  the  true  laws  alike  of  art  and  destiny.  But,  the 
safest  way  of  all,  is  to  assure  ourselves  that  true  knowl- 
edge of  any  thing  or  any  creature  is  only  of  the  good 
of  it ;  that  its  nature  and  life  are  in  that,  and  that  what 
is  diseased,  —  that  is  to  say,  unnatural  and  mortal, — 
you  must  cut  away  from  it  in  contemplation,  as  you 
would  in  surgery. 

Of  the  six  tutor  nations,  two,  the  Tuscan  and  Arab, 
have  no  effect  on  early  Christian  England.  But  the 
Roman,  Greek,  Syrian,  and  Egyptian  act  together  from 
the  earliest  times ;  you  are  to  study  the  influence  of 
Rome  upon  England  in  Agricola,  Constantius,  St.  Ben- 
edict, and  St.  Gregory ;  of  Greece  upon  Erigland  in 
the  artists  of  Byzantium  and  Ravenna;  of  Syria  and 
Egypt  upon  England  in  St.  Jerome,  St.  Augustine,  St. 
Chrysostom,  and  St.  Athanase. 

St.  Jerome,  in  central  Bethlehem ;  St.  Augustine, 
Carthaginian  by  birth,  in  truth  a  converted  Tyrian, 
Athanase,  Egyptian,  symmetric  and  fixed  as  an  Egyp- 
tian aisle  ;  Chrysostom,  golden  mouth  of  all ;  these  are, 
indeed,  every  one  teachers  of  all  the  western  world, 
but  St.  Augustine  especially  of  lay,  as  distinguished 
from  monastic,  Christianity  to  the  Franks,  and  finally 
to  us.  His  rule,  expanded  into  the  treatise  of  the  City 
of  God,  is  taken  for  guide  of  life  and  policy  by  Charle- 
magne, and  becomes  certainly  the  fountain  of  Evangel- 
ical Christianity,  distinctively  so  called,  (and  broadly 
the   lay  Christianity  of   Europe,  since,   in  the  purest 


Bertha  to    Osbiirga.  21 

form  of  it,  that  is  to  say,  the  most  merciful,  charitable, 
variously  applicable,  kindly  wise.)  The  greatest  type 
of  it,  as  far  as  I  know,  St.  Martin  of  Tours,  whose 
character  is  sketched,  I  think  in  the  main  rightly,  in 
the  Bible  of  Amiens ;  and  you  may  bind  together  your 
thoughts  of  its  course  by  remembering  that  Alcuin, 
born  at  York,  dies  in  the  Abbey  of  St.  Martin,  at 
Tours ;  that  as  St.  Augustine  was  in  his  writings 
Charlemagne's  Evangelist  in  faith,  Alcuin  was,  in 
living  presence,  his  master  in  rhetoric,  logic,  and  as- 
tronomy, with  the  other  physical  sciences. 

A  hundred  years  later  than  St.  Augustine,  cornes  the 
rule  of  St.  Benedict  —  the  Monastic  rule,  virtually,  of 
European  Christianity,  ever  since  —  and  theologically 
the  Law  of  Works,  as  distinguished  from  the  Law  of 
Faith.  St.  Augustine  and  all  the  disciples  of  St. 
Augustine  tell  Christians  what  they  should  feel  and 
think  :  St.  Benedict  and  all  the  disciples  of  St.  Bene- 
dict tell  Christians  what  they  should  say  and  do. 

In  the  briefest,  but  also  the  perfectest  distinction, 
the  disciples  of  St.  Augustine  are  those  who  open  the 
door  to  Christ  —  "  If  any  man  hear  my  voice  "  ;  but 
the  Benedictines  those  to  whom  Christ  opens  the  door 
—  "To  him  that  knocketh  it  shall  be  opened." 

Now,  note  broadly  the  course  and  action  of  this  rule, 
as  it  combines  with  the  older  one.  St.  Augustine's, 
accepted  heartily  by  Clovis,  and,  with  various  degrees 
of    understanding,    by    the    kings    and    queens    of    the 


22  The  Pleasures  of  Learning. 

Merovingian  dynasty,  makes  seemingly  little  difference 
in  their  conduct,  so  that  their  profession  of  it  remains 
a  scandal  to  Christianity  to  this  day  ;  and  yet  it  lives, 
in  the  true  hearts  among  them,  down  from  St.  Clotilda 
to  her  great  grand-daughter  Bertha,  who  in  becoming 
Queen  of  Kent,  builds  under  its  chalk  downs  her  own 
little  chapel  to  St.  Martin,  and  is  the  first  effectively 
and  permanently  useful  missionary  to  the  Saxons,  the 
beginner  of  English  Erudition,  —  the  first  laid  corner 
stone  of  beautiful  English  character. 

I  think  henceforward  you  will  find  the  memorandum 
of  dates  which  I  have  here  set  down  for  my  own  guid- 
ance more  simply  useful  than  those  confused  by  record 
of  unimportant  persons  and  inconsequent  events,  which 
form  the  indices  of  common  history. 

From  the  year  of  the  Saxon  invasion  449,  there  are 
exactly  400  years  to  the  birth  of  Alfred,  849.  You 
have  no  difficulty  in  remembering  those  cardinal  years. 
Then,  you  have  Four  great  men  and  great  events  to 
remember,  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century.  Clovis, 
and  the  founding  of  Frank  Kingdom  ;  Theodoric  and 
the  founding  of  the  Gothic  Kingdom  ;  Justinian  and 
the  founding  of  Civil  law ;  St.  Benedict  and  the  found- 
ing of  Religious  law. 

Of  Justinian,  and  his  work,  I  am  not  able  myself  to 
form  any  opinion  —  and  it  is,  I  think,  unnecessary  for 
students  of  history  to  form  any,  until  they  are  able  to 
estimate  clearly  the  benefits,  and  mischief,  of  the  civil 


Bertha  to    Osbiirga.  23 

law  of  Europe  in  its  present  state.  'But  to  Clovis, 
Theodoric,  and  St.  Benedict,  without  any  question,  we 
owe  more  than  any  English  historian  has  yet  ascribed, 
—  and  they  are  easily  held  in  mind  together,  for  Clovis 
ascended  the  Frank  throne  in  the  year  of  St.  Benedict's 
birth,  481.  Theodoric  fought  the  battle  of  Verona, 
and  founded  the  Ostrogothic  Kingdom  in  Italy  twelve 
years  later,  in  493,  and  thereupon  married  the  sister  of 
Clovis.  That  marriage  is  always  passed  in  a  casual 
sentence,  as  if  a  merely  political  one,  and  while  page 
after  page  is  spent  in  following  the  alternations  of  furi- 
ous crime  and  fatal  chance,  in  the  contests  between 
Fredegonde  and  Brunehaut,  no  historian  ever  considers 
whether  the  great  Ostrogoth  who  wore  in  the  battle  of 
Verona  the  dress  which  his  mother  had  woven  for  him, 
was  likely  to  have  cliosen  a  wife  without  love!  —  or 
how  far  the  perfectness,  justice,  and  temperate  wisdom 
of  every  ordinance  of  his  reign  was  owing  to  the  sym- 
pathy and  counsel  of  his  Frankish  queen. 

You  have  to  recollect,  then,  thus  far,  only  three 
cardinal  dates  :  — ■ 

449.    Saxon  invasion. 

481.    Clovis  reigns  and  St.  Ikmedict  is  born. 

493.    Theodoric  conc|uers  at  Verona. 

Then,  roughly,  a  hundred  years  later,  in  590,  Ethel- 
bert,  the  fifth  from  Ilcngist,  and  Bertha,  the  third  from 
Clotilde,  arc  king  and  cpieen  of  Kent.  I  cannot  find 
the   date  of  their  marriage,   but  the   date,   590,   which 


24  The  Pleasures  of  Leamihig. 

you  must  recollect  for  cardinal,  is  that  of  Gregory's 
accession  to  the  pontificate,  and  I  believe  Bertha  was 
then  in  middle  life,  having  persevered  in  her  religion 
firmly,  but  inoffensively,  and  made  herself  beloved  by 
her  husband  and  people.  She,  in  England,  Theodo- 
linda  in  Lombardy,  and  St.  Gregory  in  Rome :  —  in 
their  hands,  virtually  lay  the  destiny  of  Europe. 

Then  the  period  from  Bertha  to  Osburga,  590  to 
849  —  say  250  years  —  is  passed  by  the  Saxon  people 
in  the  daily  more  reverent  learning  of  the  Christian 
faith,  and  daily  more  peaceful  and  skilful  practice  of 
the  humane  arts  and  duties  which  it  invented  and 
inculcated. 

The  statement  given  by  Sir  Edward  Creasy  of  the 
result  of  these  250  years  of  lesson  is,  with  one  cor- 
rection, the  most  simple  and  just  that  I  can  find. 

"  A  few  years  before  the  close  of  the  sixth  century, 
the  country  was  little  more  than  a  wide  battle-field, 
where  gallant  but  rude  warriors  fought  with  each 
other,  or  against  the  neighbouring  Welsh  or  Scots  ; 
unheeding  and  unheeded  by  the  rest  of  Europe,  or,  if 
they  attracted  casual  attention,  regarded  with  dread 
and  disgust  as  the  fiercest  of  barbarians  and  the  most 
untameable  of  pagans.  In  the  eighth  century,  Eng- 
land was  looked  up  to  with  admiration  and  gratitude, 
as  superior  to  all  the  other  countries  of  Western  Eu- 
rope in  piety  and  learning,  and  as  the  land  whence 
the    most    zealous   and    successful  saints  and  teachers 


BertJia  to   Osburga.  25 

came  forth  to  convert  and  enlighten  the  still  barbarous 
regions  of  the  continent." 

This  statement  is  broadly  true  ;  yet  the  correction 
it  needs  is  a  very  important  one.  England,  —  under 
her  first  Alfred  of  Northumberland,  and  under  Ina  of 
Wessex,  is  indeed  during  these  centuries  the  most 
learned,  thoughtful,  and  progressive  of  European  states 
But  she  is  not  a  missionary  power.  The  missionaries 
are  always  to  her,  not  from  her  :  —  for  the  very  reason 
that  she  is  learning  so  eagerly,  she  does  not  take  to 
preaching.  Ina  founds  his  Saxon  school  at  Rome  not 
to  teach  Rome,  nor  convert  the  Pope,  but  to  drink  at 
the  source  of  knowledge,  and  to  receive  laws  from 
direct  and  unquestioned  authority.  The  missionary 
power  was  wholly  Scotch  and  Irish,  and  that  power 
was  wholly  one  of  zeal  and  faith,  not  of  learning.  I 
will  ask  you,  in  the  course  of  my  next  lecture,  to  regard 
it  attentively  ;  to-day,  I  must  rapidly  draw  to  the  con- 
clusions  I  would  leave  witii  you. 

It  is  more  and  more  wonderful  to  me  as  I  think  of 
it,  that  no  effect  whatever  was  produced  on  the  Saxon, 
nor  on  any  other  healthy  race  of  the  North,  either  by 
the  luxury  of  Rome,  or  by  her  art,  whether  construc- 
tive or  imitative.  The  Saxon  builds  no  aqueducts  — 
designs  no  roads,  rfjunds  no  theatres  in  imitation  of 
her,  —  envies  none  of  her  vile  pleasures, — admires,  so 
far  as  I  can  judge,  none  of  her  far-carried  realistic  art. 
I  suppose  that  it  needs  intelligence  of  a  more  advanced 


26  The  Pleasures  of  Learning. 

kind  to  see  the  qualities  of  complete  sculpture :  and 
that  we  may  think  of  the  Northern  intellect  as  still  like 
that  of  a  child,  who  cares  to  picture  its  own  thoughts 
in  its  own  way,  but  does  not  care  for  the  thoughts  of 
older  people,  or  attempt  to  copy  what  it  feels  too  diffi- 
cult. This  much  at  least  is  certain,  that  for  one  cause 
or  another,  everything  that  now  at  Paris  or  London  our 
painters  most  care  for  and  try  to  realize,  of  ancient 
Rome,  was  utterly  innocuous  and  unattractive  to  the 
Saxon  :  while  his  mind  was  frankly  open  to  the  direct 
teaching  of  Greece  and  to  the  methods  of  bright  dec- 
oration employed  in  the  Byzantine  Empire:  for  these 
alone  seemed  to  his  fancy  suggestive  of  the  glories 
of  the  brighter  world  promised  by  Christianity.  Jew- 
ellery, vessels  of  gold  and  silver,  beautifully  written 
books,  and  music,  are  the  gifts  of  St.  Gregory  alike  to 
the  Saxon  and  Lombard ;  all  these  beautiful  things 
being  used,  not  for  the  pleasure  of  the  present  life, 
but  as  the  symbols  of  another  ;  while  the  drawings  in 
Saxon  manuscripts,  in  which,  better  than  in  any  other 
remains  of  their  life,  we  can  read  the  people's  charac- 
ter, are  rapid  endeavours  to  express  for  themselves, 
and  convey  to  others,  some  likeness  of  the  realities  of 
sacred  event  in  which  they  had  been  instructed.  They 
differ  from  every  archaic  school  of  former  design  in 
this  evident  correspondence  with  an  imagined  reality. 
All  previous  archaic  art  whatsoever  is  symbolic  and 
decorative  —  not    realistic.      The  contest  of    Herakles 


Bertha  to   OshiLi'o-a.  27 


ii 


with  the  Hydra  on  a  Greek  vase  is  a  mere  sign  that 
such  a  contest  took  place,  not  a  picture  of  it,  and  in 
drawing  that  sign  the  potter  is  always  thinking  of  the 
effect  of  the  engraved  lines  on  the  curves  of  his  pot, 
and  taking  care  to  keep  out  of  the  way  of  the  handle ; 
—  but  a  Saxon  monk  would  scratch  his  idea  of  the  Fall 
of  the  angels  or  the  Temptation  of  Christ  over  a  whole 
page  of  his  manuscript  in  variously  explanatory  scenes, 
evidently  full  of  inexpressible  vision,  and  eager  to 
explain  and  illustrate  all  that  he  felt  or  believed. 

Of  the  progress  and  arrest  of  these  gifts,  I  shall 
have  to  speak  in  my  next  address  ;  but  I  must  regret- 
fully conclude  to-day  with  some  brief  warning  against 
the  complacency  which  might  lead  you  to  regard  them 
as  either  at  that  time  entirely  original  in  the  Saxon 
race,  or  at  the  present  day  as  signally  characteristic  of 
it.  That  form  of  comi)lacency  is  exhibited  in  its  most 
amiable  but,  therefore,  most  deceptive  guise,  in  the 
passage  with  which  the  late  Dean  of  Westminster 
concluded  his  lecture  at  Canterbury  in  April,  1854,  on 
the  subject  of  the  landing  of  Augustine.  I  will  not 
spoil  the  emi)hasis  of  the  passage  by  comment  as  I 
read,  but  must  take  leave  afterwards  to  intimate  some 
grounds  for  al)atement  in  the  fervour  of  its  self-gratu- 
latory  ecstasy. 

"Let  any  one  sit  on  the  hill  of  the  little  church  of 
St.  Martin,  and  look  on  the  view  which  is  there  sjiread 
before    his  eyes.       Immediately   below   are   the  towers 


28  TJic  Pleasures  of  Learning. 

of  the  great  abbey  of  St.  Augustine,  where  Christian 
learning  and  civilization  first  struck  root  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  ;  and  within  which  now,  after  a  lapse  of 
many  centuries,  a  new  institution  has  arisen,  intended  to 
carry  far  and  wide,  to  countries  of  which  Gregory  and 
Augustine  never  heard,  the  blessings  which  they  gave 
to  us.  Carry  your  view  on  —  and  there  rises  high  above 
all  the  magnificent  pile  of  our  cathedral,  equal  in  splen- 
dour and  state  to  any,  the  noblest  temple  or  church 
that  Augustine  could  have  seen  in  ancient  Rome, 
rising  on  the  very  ground  which  derives  its  consecra- 
tion from  him.  And  still  more  than  the  grandeur  of 
the  outward  buildings  that  rose  from  the  little  church 
of  Augustine  and  the  little  palace  of  Ethelbert  have 
been  the  institutions  of  all  kinds  of  which  these  were 
the  earliest  cradle.  From  Canterbury,  the  first  English 
Christian  city,  —  from  Kent,  the  first  English  Christian 
kingdom  —  has  by  degrees  arisen  the  whole  constitu- 
tion of  Church  and  State  in  England  which  now  binds 
together  the  whole  British  Empire.  And  from  the 
Christianity  here  established  in  England  has  flowed, 
by  direct  consequence,  first  the  Christianity  of  Ger- 
many ;  then,  after  a  long  interval,  of  North  America  ; 
and  lastly,  we  may  trust,  in  time,  of  all  India  and  all 
Australasia.  The  view  from  St.  Martin's  Church  is 
indeed  one  of  the  most  inspiriting  that  can  be  found 
in  the  world  ;  there  is  none  to  which  I  would  more 
willingly  take  any  one  who  doubted  whether  a  small 


Bertha  to    Osbiu^ga.  29 

beginning  could  lead  to  a  great  and  lasting  good  ;  — 
none  which  carries  us  more  vividly  back  into  the  past, 
or  more  hopefully  forward  into  the  future." 

To  this  Gregorian  canticle  in  praise  of  the  British 
constitution,  I  grieve,  but  am  compelled,  to  take  these 
following  historical  objections.  The  first  missionary 
to  Germany  was  Ulphilas,  and  what  she  owes  to  these 
islands  she  owes  to  lona,  not  to  Thanct.  Our  mission- 
ary offices  to  America  as  to  Africa,  consist  I  believe 
principally  in  the  stealing  of  land,  and  the  extermina- 
tion of  its  proprietors  by  intoxication.  Our  rule  in 
India  has  introduced  there.  Paisley  instead  of  Cash- 
mere shawls  :  in  Australasia  our  Christian  aid  supplies, 
I  suppose,  the  pious  farmer  with  convict  labour.  And 
although,  when  the  Dean  wrote  the  above  passage,  St. 
Augustine's  and  the  cathedral  were  —  1  take  it  oh  trust 
from  his  description  —  the  principal  objects  in  the 
prospect  from  St.  Martin's  Hill,  I  believe  even  the 
cheerfullest  of  my  audience  would  not  now  think 
the  scene  one  of  the  most  inspiriting  in  the  world. 
For  recent  progress  has  entirely  accommodated  the 
architecture  of  the  scene  to  the  convenience  of  the 
missionary  workers  above  enumerated  ;  to  the  peculiar 
necessities  of  the  cixilization  they  have  achieved.  For 
the  sake  of  which  the  cathedral,  the  monastery,  the 
temple,  and  the  tomb,  of  Bertha,  contract  themselves 
in  distant  or  despised  subservience  under  the  colossal 
walls  of  the  county  gaol. 


LECTURE    II. 


THE    PLEASURES    OF    FAITH. 

n/llfred  to  the  Confessor. 


LECTURE   11. 
THE   PLEASURES   OF   FAITH. 


ALFRED   TO   THE    CONFESSOR. 

I  WAS  forced  in  my  last  lecture  to  pass  by  alto- 
gether, and  to-day  can  only  with  momentary  defini- 
tion notice,  the  part  taken  by  Scottish  missionaries  in 
the  Christianizing  of  England  and  Burgundy.  I  would 
pray  you  therefore,  in  order  to  fill  the  gap  which  I 
think  it  better  to  leave  distinctly,  than  close  confusedly, 
to  read  the  histories  of  St.  Patrick,  St.  Columba,  and 
St.  Columban,  as  they  are  given  you  by  Montalembert 
in  his  'Moines  d'Occident.'  You  will  find  in  his  pages 
all  the  essential  facts  that  are  known,  encircled  with 
a  nimbus  of  enthusiastic  sympathy  which  I  hope  you 
will  like  better  to  see  them  through,  than  distorted  by 
blackening  fog  of  contcmi)tuous  rationalism.  But  al- 
though I  ask  you  thus  to  make  yourselves  aware  of  the 
greatness  of  my  omission,  T  must  also  certify  you  that 
it  does  not  break  the  unity  of  our  own  immediate 
subject.     The  influence  of  Celtic  passion  and  art  both 

33 


34  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

on  Northumbria  and  the  Continent,  beneficent  in  all 
respects  while  it  lasted,  expired  without  any  permanent 
share  in  the  work  or  emotion  of  the  Saxon  and  Frank. 
The  book  of  Kells,  and  the  bell  of  St.  Patrick,  repre- 
sent sufficiently  the  peculiar  character  of  Celtic  design ; 
and  long  since,  in  the  first  lecture  of  the  '  Two  Paths,' 
I  explained  both  the  modes  of  skill,  and  points  of 
weakness,  which  rendered  such  design  unprogressive. 
Perfect  in  its  peculiar  manner,  and  exulting  in  the 
faultless  practice  of  a  narrow  skill,  it  remained  cen- 
tury after  century  incapable  alike  of  inner  growth,  or 
foreign  instruction  ;  inimitable,  yet  incorrigible ;  mar- 
vellous, yet  despicable,  to  its  death.  Despicable>  I 
mean,  only  in  the  limitation  of  its  capacity,  not  in  its 
quality  or  nature.  If  you  make  a  Christian  of  a  lamb 
or  a  squirrel  —  what  can  you  expect  of  the  lamb 
but  jumping  —  what  of  the  squirrel,  but  pretty  spirals, 
traced  with  his  tail }  He  won't  steal  your  nuts  any 
more,  and  he'll  say  his  prayers  like  this  —  *  ;  but  you 
cannot  make  a  Beatrice's  griffin,  and  emblem  of  all  the 
Catholic  Church,  out  of  him. 

You  will  have  observed,  also,  that  the  plan  of  these 
lectures  does  not  include  any  reference  to  the  Roman 
Period  in  England  ;  of  which  you  will  find  all  I  think 
necessary  to  say,  in  the  part  called  Vallc  Crucis  of 
'Our  Fathers  have  told  us.'  But  I  must  here  warn 
you,  with  reference  to  it,  of  one  gravely  false  prejudice 

*  Making  a  sign. 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  35 

of  Montalembcrt.  He  is  entirely  blind  to  the  condi- 
tions of  Roman  virtue,  which  existed  in  the  midst  of 
the  corruptions  of  the  P^mpire,  forming  the  characters 
of  such  Emperors  as  Pertinax,  Carus,  Probus,  tlie  sec- 
ond Claudius,  Aurelian,  and  our  own  Constantius  ;  and 
he  denies,  with  abusive  violence,  the  power  for  good, 
of  Roman  Law,  over  the  Gauls  and  Britons. 

Respecting  Roman  national  character,  I  will  simply 
beg  you  to  remember,  that  both  St.  Benedict  and  St. 
Gregory  are  Roman  patricians,  before  they  are  either 
monk  or  pope  ;  respecting  its  influence  on  Britain,  I 
think  you  may  rest  content  with  Shakespeare's  esti- 
mate of  it.  Both  Lear  and  Cymbeline  belong  to  this 
time,  so  difficult  to  our  apprehension,  when  the  Briton 
accepted  both  Roman  laws  and  Roman  gods.  There 
is  indeed  the  born  Kentish  gentleman's  protest  against 
them  in  Kent's  — 

"  Now,  b\-  Apollo,  king, 
Thou  swear'st  thy  gods  in  vain  "  ; 

but  both  Cordelia  and  Imogen  arc  just  as  thoroughly 
Roman  ladies,  as  Virgilia  or  Calphurnia. 

Of  I5ritish  Christianity  and  the  Arthurian  Legends, 
I  shall  have  a  word  .or  two  to  say  in  my  lecture  on 
"  Fancy,"  in  connection  with  the  similar  romance 
which  surrounds  Tlieodoric  and  Charlemagne  :  only 
the  worst  of  it  is,  tliat  while  botli  Dietrich  and  Karl 
arc  themselves    more  wonderful    than    the    Icfrends  of 


36  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

them,  Arthur  fades  into  intangible  vision:  —  this  much, 
however,  remains  to  this  day,  of  Arthurian  blood  in 
us,  that  the  richest  fighting  element  in  the  British 
army  and  navy  is  British  native,  — that  is  to  say,  High- 
lander, Irish,  Welsh,  and  Cornish. 

Content,  therefore,  (means  being  now  given  you  for 
filling  gaps,)  with  the  estimates  given  you  in  the  pre- 
ceding lecture  of  the  sources  of  instruction  possessed 
by  the  Saxon  capital,  I  pursue  to-day  our  question 
originally  proposed,  what  London  might  have  been  by 
this  time,  if  the  nature  of  the  flowers,  trees,  and  chil- 
dren, born  at  the  Thames-side,  had  been  rightly  under- 
stood and  cultivated. 

Many  of  my  hearers  can  imagine  far  better  than  I, 
the  look  that  London  must  have  had  in  Alfred's  and 
Canute's  days.*  I  have  not,  indeed,  the  least  idea  my- 
self what  its  buildings  were  like,  but  certainly  the 
groups  of  its  shipping  must  have  been  superb ;  small, 

*  Here  Alfred's  Silver  Penny  was  shown  and  commented  on,  thus: — Of 
what  London  was  like  in  the  days  of  faith,  I  can  show  you  one  piece  of  artistic 
evidence.  It  is  Alfred's  silver  penny  struck  in  London  mint.  The  character 
of  a  coinage  is  quite  conclusive  evidence  in  national  history,  and  there  is  no 
great  empire  in  progress,  but  tells  its  story  in  beautiful  coins.  Here  in  Alfred's 
penny,  a  round  coin  with  L.O.N.D.LN.LA.  struck  on  it,  you  have  just  the  same 
beauty  of  design,  the  same  enigmatical  arrangerrient  of  letters,  as  in  the  early 
inscription,  which  it  is  "the  pride  of  my  life"  to  have  discovered  at  Venice. 
This  inscription  ("the  first  words  that  Venice  ever  speaks  aloud  ")  is,  it  will  be 
remembered,  on  the  Church  of  St.  Giacomo  di  Rialto,  and  runs,  bemg  inter- 
preted—  "Around  this  temple,  let  the  merchant's  law  bfe  just,  his  weights  true, 
and  his  covenants  faithful." 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  37 

but  entirely  seaworthy  vessels,  manned  by  the  best 
seamen  in  the  then  world.  Of  course,  now,  at  Chat- 
ham and  Portsmouth  we  have  our  ironclads,  — extreme- 
ly beautiful  and  beautifully  manageable  things,  no 
doubt  —  to  set  against  this  Saxon  and  Danish  shipping; 
but  the  Saxon  war-ships  lay  here  at  London  shore  — 
bright  with  banner  and  shield  and  dragon  prow,  — 
instead  of  these  you  may  be  happier,  but  are  not 
handsomer,  in  having,  now,  the  coal-barge,  the  penny 
steamer,  and  the  wherry  full  of  shop  boys  and  girls. 
I  dwell  however  for  a  moment  only  on  the  naval  aspect 
of  the  tidal  waters  in  the  days  of  Alfred,  because  I  can 
refer  you  for  all  detail  on  this  part  of  our  subject  to 
the  wonderful  opening  chapter  of  Dean  Stanley's  His- 
tory of  Westminster  Abbey,  where  you  will  find  the 
origin  of  the  name  of  London  given  as  **  The  City  of 
Ships."  He  does  not,  however,  tell  you,  that  there 
were  built,  then  and  there,  the  biggest  war-ships  in  the 
world.  I  have  often  said  to  friends  who  praised  my 
own  books  that  I  would  rather  have  written  that  chap- 
ter than  any  one  of  them  ;  yet  if  I  had  been  able  to 
write  the  historical  part  of  it,  the  conclusions  drawn 
would  have  been  extremely  different.  The  Dean  in- 
deed describes  with  a  poet's  joy  the  River  of  wells, 
which  rose  from  those  "once  consecrated  springs  which 
now  lie  choked  in  Holywell  and  Clerkenwell,  and  the 
rivulet  of  Ulebrig  which  crossed  the  Strand  under  the 
Ivy  bridge"  ;  but  it  is  only  in  the  spirit  of  a  modern 


38  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

citizen  of  Belgravia  that  he  exults  in  the  fact  that 
"  the  great  arteries  of  our  crowded  streets,  the  vast 
sewers  which  cleanse  our  habitations,  are  fed  by  the 
life-blood  of  those  old  and  living  streams  ;  that  under- 
neath our  tread  the  Tyburn,  and  the  Holborn,  and  the 
Fleet,  and  the  Wall  Brook,  are  still  pursuing  their 
ceaseless  course,  still  ministering  to  the  good  of  man, 
though  in  a  far  different  fashion  than  when  Druids 
drank  of  their  sacred  springs,  and  Saxons  were  bap- 
tized in  their  rushing  waters,  ages  ago." 

Whatever  sympathy  you  may  feel  with  these  elo- 
quent expressions  of  that  entire  complacency  in  the 
present,  past,  and  future,  which  peculiarly  .animates 
Dean  Stanley's  writings,  I  must,  in  this  case,  pray  you 
to  observe  that  the  transmutation  of  holy  wells  into 
sewers  has,  at  least,  destroyed  the  charm  and  utility 
of  the  Thames  as  a  salmon  stream,  and  I  must  ask  you 
to  read  with  attention  the  succeeding  portions  of  the 
chapter  which  record  the  legends  of  the  river  fisheries 
in  their  relation  to  the  first  Abbey  of  Westminster ; 
dedicated  by  its  builders  to  St.  Peter,  not  merely  in  his 
office  of  cornerstone  of  the  Church,  nor  even  figura- 
tively as  a  fisher  of  men,  but  directly  as  a  fisher  of 
fish  :  —  and  which  maintained  themselves,  you  will  see, 
in  actual  ceremony  down  to  1382,  when  a  fisherman 
still  annually  took  his  place  beside  the  Prior,  after 
having  brought  in  a  salmon  for  St.  Peter,  which  was 
carried  in  state  down  the  middle  of  the  refectory. 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  39 

But  as  I  refer  to  this  page  for  the  exact  word,  my 
eye  is  caught  by  one  of  the  sentences  of  Londonian  * 
thought  which  constantly  pervert  the  well-meant  books 
of  pious  England.  "  We  see  also,"  says  the  Dean, 
"  the  union  of  innocent  fiction  with  worldly  craft,  which 
marks  so  many  of  the  legends  both  of  Pagan  and 
Christian  times."  I  might  simply  reply  to  this  insin- 
uation that  times  which  have  no  legends  differ  from 
the  legendary  ones  merely  by  uniting  guilty,  instead 
of  innocent,  fiction,  with  worldly  craft ;  but  I  must 
farther  advise  you  that  the  legends  of  these  passion- 
ate times  are  in  no  wise,  and  in  no  sense,  fiction  at 
all  ;  but  the  true  record  of  impressions  made  on  the 
minds  of  persons  in  a  state  of  eager  spiritual  excite- 
ment, brought  into  bright  focus  by  acting  steadily  and 
frankly  under  its  impulses.  I  could  tell  you  a  great 
deal  more  about  such  things  than  you  would  believe, 
and  therefore,  a  great  deal  more  than  it  would  do  you 
the  least  good  to  hear;  —  but  this  much  any  who  care 
to  use  their  common  sense  modestly,  cannot  but  admit, 
that-  unless  they  choose  to  try  the  rough  life  of  the 
Christian  ages,  they  cannot  understand  its  practical 
consequences.  You  have  all  been  taught  by  Lord 
Macaulay  and  his  school  that  because  you  have  Carpets 
instead  of  rushes  for  your  feet ;  and  Feather-beds  in- 
stead jf  fern  for  your  backs  ;  and  Kickshaws  instead  of 
beef  for  your  eating  ;  and  Drains  instead  of  Holy  Wells 

*  Not  Londinian. 


40  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

for  your  drinking;  —  that,  therefore,  you  are  the  Cream 
of  Creation,  and  every  one  of  you  a  seven-headed 
Solomon.  Stay  in  those  pleasant  circumstances  and 
convictions  if  you  please  ;  but  don't  accuse  your 
roughly  bred  and  fed  fathers  of  telling  lies  about 
the  aspect  the  earth  and  sky  bore  to  tJiem, — till  you 
have  trodden  the  earth  as  they,  barefoot,  and  seen  the 
heavens  as  they,  face  to  face.  If  you  care  to  see  and 
to  know  for  yourselves,  you  may  do  it  with  little  pains  ; 
you  need  not  do  any  great  thing,  you  needn't  keep  one 
eye  open  and  the  other  shut  for  ten  years  over  a  micro- 
scope, nor  fight  your  way  through  icebergs  and  dark- 
ness to  knowledge  of  the  celestial  pole.  Simply,  do  as 
much  as  king  after  king  of  the  Saxons  did,  —  put  rough 
shoes  on  your  feet  and  a  rough  cloak  on  your  shoul 
ders,  and  walk  to  Rome  and  back.  Sleep  by  the 
roadside,  when  it  is  fine,  —  in  the  first  outhouse  you 
can  find,  when  it  is  wet ;  and  live  on  bread  and  water, 
with  an  onion  or  two,  all  the  way ;  and  if  the  experi- 
ences which  you  will  have  to  relate  on  your  return  do 
not,  as  may  well  be,  deserve  the  name  of  spiritual ;  at 
all  events  you  will  not  be  disposed  to  let  other  people 
regard  them  either  as  Poetry  or  Fiction. 

With  this  warning,  presently  to  be  at  greater  length 
insisted  on,  I  trace  for  you,  in  Dean  Stanley's  words, 
which  cannot  be  bettered  except  in  the  collection  of 
their  more  earnest  passages  from  among  his  interludes 
of  graceful  but  dangerous  qualification,  —  I  trace,  with 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  41 

only  such  omission,  the  story  he  has  told  us  of  the 
foundation  of  that  Abbey,  which,  he  tells  you,  was  the 
Mother  of  London,  and  has  ever  been  the  shrine  and 
the  throne  of  English  faith  and  truth. 

"The  gradual  formation  of  a  monastic  body,  indi- 
cated in  the  charters  of  Offa  and  Edgar,  marks  the 
spread  of  the  Benedictine  order  throughout  England, 
under  the  influence  of  Dunstan.  The  'terror'  of  the 
spot,  which  had  still  been  its  chief  characteristic  in 
the  charter  of  the  wild  Offa,  had,  in  the  days  of  the 
more  peaceful  Edgar,  given  way  to  a  dubious  'renown.' 
Twelve  monks  is  the  number  traditionally  said  to  have 
been  established  by  Dunstan.  A  few  acres  further  up 
the  river  formed  their  chief  property,  and  their  monas- 
tic character  was  sufficiently  recognized  to  have  given 
to  the  old  locality  of  the  '  terrible  place  '  the  name  of 
the  'Western  Monastery,'  or  'Minster  of  the  West.'" 

The  Benedictines  then  —  twelve  Benedictine  monks 
—  thus  begin  the  building  of  existent  Christian  Lon- 
don. You  know  I  told  you  the  Benedictines  are  the 
Doing  people,  as  the  disciples  of  St.  Augustine  the 
Sentimental  people.  The  Benedictines  find  no  terror 
in  their  own  thoughts  —  face  the  terror  of  places  — 
change  it  into  beauty  of  places, — make  this  terrible 
place,  a  Motherly  Place  —  Mother  of  London. 

This  first  Westminster,  however,  the  Dean  goes  on 
to  say,  "  seems  to  have  been  overrun  by  the  Danes, 
and  it  would  have  had  no  further  history  but  for  the 


4-^  The  Pleasures  of  FaitJi. 

combination  of  circumstances  which  directed  hither  the 
notice  of  Edward  the  Confessor. 

I  haven't  time  to  read  you  all  the  combination  of  cir 
cumstances.    The  last  clinching  circumstance  was  this  — 

"There  was  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Worcester,  'far 
from  men  in  the  wilderness,  on  the  slope  of  a  wood,  in 
a  cave  deep  down  in  the  grey  rock,'  a  holy  hermit  'of 
great  age,  living  on  fruits  and  roots.'  One  night  when, 
after  reading  in  the  Scriptures  '  how  hard  are  the  pains 
of  hell,  and  how  the  enduring  life  of  Heaven  is  sweet 
and  to  be  desired,'  he  could  neither  sleep  nor  repose, 
St.  Peter  appeared  to  him,  'bright  and  beautiful,  like 
to  a  clerk,'  and  warned  him  to  tell  the  King,  that  he 
was  released  from  his  vow  ;  that  on  that  very  day  his 
messengers  would  return  from  Rome ; "  (that  is  the 
combination  of  circumstances  —  bringing  Pope's  order 
to  build  a  church  to  release  the  King  from  his  vow  of 
pilgrimage) ;  "  that  '  at  Thorney,  two  leagues  from  the 
city,'  was  the  spot  marked  out  where,  in  an  ancient 
church,  'situated  low,'  he  was  to  establish  a  perfect 
Benedictine  monastery,  which  should  be  '  the  gate  of 
heaven,  the  ladder  of  prayer,  whence  those  who  serve 
St.  Peter  there,  shall  by  him  be  admitted  into  Para- 
dise.' The  hermit  writes  the  account  of  the  vision  on 
parchment,  seals  it  with  wax,  and  brings  it  to  the  King, 
who  compares  it  with  the  answer  of  the  messengers, 
just  arrived  from  Rome,  and  determines  on  carrying 
out  the  design  as  the  Apostle  had  ordered. 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  43 

"The  ancient  church,  'situated  low,'  indicated  in  thig 
vision  the  one  whose  attached  monastery  had  been 
destroyed  by  the  Danes,  but  its  little  church  remained, 
and  was  already  dear  to  the  Confessor,  not  only  from 
the  lovely  tradition  of  its  dedication  by  the  spirit  of 
St.  Peter;"  (you  must  read  that  for  yourselves  ;)  "but 
also  because  of  two  miracles  happening  there  to  the 
King  himself. 

"  The  first  was  the  cure  of  a  cripple,  who  sat  in  the 
road  between  the  Palace  and  'the  Chapel  of  St.  Peter,' 
which  was  'near,'  and  who  explained  to  the  Chamber- 
lain Hugolin  that,  after  six  pilgrimages  to  Rome  in 
vain,  St.  Peter  had  promised  his  cure  if  the  King 
would,  on  his  own  royal  neck,  carry  him  to  the  Mon- 
astery. The  King  immediately  consented  ;  and,  amidst 
the  scoffs  of  the  court,  bore  the  poor  man  to  the  steps 
of  the  High  Altar.  There  the  cripple  was  received  by 
Godric  the  sacristan,  and  walked  away  on  his  own 
restored  feet,  hanging  his  stool  on  the  wall  for  a 
trophy. 

"  Before  that  same  High  Altar  was  also  believed  to 
have  been  seen  one  of  the  Eucharistical  portents,  so 
frequent  in  the  Middle  Ages.  A  child,  'pure  and 
bright  like  a  spirit,'  appeared  to  the  King  in  the  sacra- 
mental elements.  Leofric,  Earl  of  Mercia,  who,  with 
his  famous  countess,  Godiva,  was  present,  saw  it  also. 

"  Such  as  these  were  the  motives  of  Edward.  Un- 
der their  influence  was  fixed  what  has  ever  since  been 
the  local  centre  of  the   English   monarchy." 


44  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

"Such  as  these  were  the  motives  of  Edward,"  says 
the  Dean.  Yes,  certainly ;  but  such  as  these  also,  first, 
were  the  acts  and  visions  of  Edward.  Take  care  that 
you  don't  slip  away,  by  the  help  of  the  glycerine  of 
the  word  "motives,"  into  fancying  that  all  these  tales 
are  only  the  after  colours  and  pictorial  metaphors  of 
sentimental  piety.  They  are  either  plain  truth  or  black 
lies  ;  take  your  choice,  —  but  don't  tickle  and  treat 
yourselves  with  the  prettiness  or  the  grotesqueness  of 
them,  as  if  they  were  Anderssen's  fairy  tales.  Either 
the  King  did  carry  the  beggar  on  his  back,  or  he 
didn't ;  either  Godiva  rode  through  Coventry,  or  she 
didn't ;  either  the  Earl  Leofric  saw  the  vision  of  the 
bright  child  at  the  altar  —  or  he  lied  like  a  knave. 
Judge,  as  you  will ;  but  do  not  Doubt. 

"The  Abbey  was  fifteen  years  in  building.  The 
King  spent  upon  it  one-tenth  of  the  property  of  the 
kingdom.  It  was  to  be  a  marvel  of  its  kind.  As  in 
its  origin  it  bore  the  traces  of  the  fantastic  and  child- 
ish "  (I  must  pause,  to  ask  you  to  substitute  for  these 
blameful  terms,  'fantastic  and  childish,'  the  better  ones 
of  '  imaginative  and  pure ')  "  character  of  the  King 
and  of  the  age ;  in  its  architecture  it  bore  the  stamp 
of  the  peculiar  position  which  Edward  occupied  in 
English  history  between  Saxon  and  Norman.  By  birth 
he  was  a  Saxon,  but  in  all  else  he  was  a  foreigner. 
Accordingly  the  Church  at  Westminster  was  a  wide- 
sweeping  innovation  on  all  that  had  been  seen  before. 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  45 

•'Destroying  the  old  building,'  he  says  in  his  charter, 
*I  have  built  up  a  new  one  from  the  very  foundation.' 
Its  fame  as  a  '  new  style  of  composition '  lingered  in 
the  minds  of  men  for  generations.  It  was  the  first 
cruciform  church  in  England,  from  which  all  the  rest  of 
like  shape  were  copied  —  an  expression  of  the  increas- 
ing hold  which,  in  the  tenth  century,  the  idea  of  the 
Crucifixion  had  laid  on  the  imagination  of  Europe. 
The  massive  roof  and  pillars  formed  a  contrast  with 
the  rude  wooden  rafters  and  beams  of  the  common 
Saxon  churches.  Its.  very  size — occupying,  as  it  did, 
almost  the  whole  area  of  the  present  building  —  was 
in  itself  portentous.  The  deep  foundations,  of  large 
square  blocks  of  grey  stone,  were  duly  laid ;  the  east 
end  was  rounded  into  an  apse ;  a  tower  rose  in  the 
centre,  crowned  by  a  cupola  of  wood.  At  the  western 
end  were  erected  two  smaller  towers,  with  five  large 
bells.  The  hard  strong  stones  were  richly  sculptured  ; 
the  windows  were  filled  with  stained  glass ;  the  roof 
was  covered  with  lead.  The  cloisters,  chapter-house, 
refectory,  dormitory,  the  infirmary,  with  its  spacious 
chapel,  if  not  completed  by  Edward,  were  all  begun, 
and  finished  in  the  next  generation  on  the  same  plan. 
This  structure,  venerable  as  it  would  be  if  it  had  lasted 
to  our  time,  has  almost  entirely  vanished.  Possibly 
one  vast  dark  arch  in  the  southern  transept,  certainly 
the  substructures  of  the  dormitory,  with  their  huge 
pillars,  'grand  and  regal  at  the  bases  and  capitals,'  the 


46  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

massive,  low-browed  passage  leading  from  the  great 
cloister  to  Little  Dean's  Yard,  and  some  portions  of 
the  refectory  and  of  the  infirmary  chapel,  remain  as 
specimens  of  the  work  which  astonished  the  last  age 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  first  age  of  the  Norman 
monarchy." 

Hitherto  I  have  read  to  you  with  only  supplemental 
comment.  But  in  the  next  following  passage,  with 
which  I  close  my  series  of  extracts,  sentence  after  sen- 
tence occurs,  at  which  as  I  read,  I  must  raise  my  hand, 
to  mark  it  for  following  deprecation,  or  denial. 

"  In  the  centre  of  Westminster  Abbey  thus  lies  its 
Founder,  and  such  is  the  story  of  its  foundation.  Even 
apart  from  the  legendary  elements  in  which  it  is  in- 
volved, it  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  by  the  fantastic 
character  of  all  its  circumstances.  We  seem  to  be  in 
a  world  of  poetry."  (I  protest,  No.)  "  Edward  is  four 
centuries  later  than  Ethelbert  and  Augustine  ;  but  the 
origin  of  Canterbury  is  commonplace  and  prosaic  com- 
pared with  the  origin  of  Westminster."  (Yes,  that's 
true.)  "  We  can  hardly  imagine  a  figure  more  incon- 
gruous to  the  soberness  of  later  times  than  the  quaint, 
irresolute,  wayward  prince  whose  chief  characteristics 
have  just  been  described.  His  titles  of  Confessor  and 
Saint  belong  not  to  the  general  instincts  of  Christen- 
dom ;  but  to  the  most  transitory  feelings  of  the  age." 
(I  protest,  No.)  "  His  opinions,  his  prevailing  motives, 
were  such  as  in  no  part  of  modern  Europe  would  now 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  47 

be  shared  by  any  educated  teacher  or  ruler."  (That's 
true  enough.)  "  But  in  spite  of  these  irreconcilable 
differences,  there  was  a  solid  ground  for  the  charm 
which  he  exercised  over  his  contemporaries.  His 
childish  and  eccentric  fancies  have  passed  away  ; "  (I 
protest,  No  ;)  "  but  his  innocent  faith  and  his  sympathy 
with  his  people  are  qualities  which,  even  in  our  altered 
times,  may  still  retain  their  place  in  the  economy  of 
the  world.  Westminster  Abbey,  so  we  hear  it  said, 
sometimes  with  a  cynical  sneer,  sometimes  with  a  tim- 
orous scruple,  has  admitted  within  its  walls  many  who 
have  been  great  without  being  good,  noble  with  a 
nobleness  of  the  earth  earthy,  worldly  with  the  wisdom 
of  this  world.  But  it  is  a  counterbalancing  reflection, 
that  the  central  tomb,  round  which  all  those  famous 
names  have  clustered,  contains  the  ashes  of  one  who, 
weak  and  erring  as  he  was,  rests  his  claims  of  inter- 
ment here,  not  on  any  act  of  power  or  fame,  but  only 
on  his  artless  piety  and  simple  goodness.  He,  towards 
whose  dust  was  attracted  the  fierce  Norman,  and  the 
proud  Plantagenet,  and  the  grasping  Tudor,  and  the 
fickle  Stuart,  even  the  Independent  Oliver,  the  Dutch 
William,  and  the  Hanoverian  George,  was  one  whose 
humble  graces  are  within  the  reach  of  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  of  every  time,  if  we  rightly  part  the 
immortal  substance  from  the  perishable  form." 

Now    I    have    read    you    these   passages  from   Dean 
Stanley  as  the  most  accurately  investigatory,  the  most 


48  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

generously  sympathetic,  the  most  reverently  acceptant 
account  of  these  days,  and  their  people,  which  you  can 
yet  find  in  any  English  history.  But  consider  now, 
point  by  point,  where  it  leaves  you.  You  are  told, 
first,  that  you  are  living  in  an  age  of  poetry.  But  the 
days  of  poetry  are  those  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton, 
not  of  Bede  :  nay,  for  their  especial  wealth  in  melo- 
dious theology  and  beautifully  rhythmic  and  pathetic 
meditation,  perhaps  the  days  which  have  given  us 
'Hiawatha,'  'In  Memoriam,'  'The  Christian  Year,'  and 
the  '  Soul's  Diary '  of  George  Macdonald,  may  be  not 
with  disgrace  compared  with  those  of  Caedmon.  And 
nothing  can  be  farther  different  from  the  temper,  noth- 
ing less  conscious  of  the  effort,  of  a  poet,  than  any 
finally  authentic  document  to  which  you  can  be  re- 
ferred for  the  relation  of  a  Saxon  miracle. 

I  will  read  you,  for  a  perfectly  typical  example,  an 
account  of  one  from  Bede's  '  Life  of  St.  Cuthbert.' 
The  passage  is  a  favourite  one  of  my  own,  but  I  do  not 
in  the  least  anticipate  its  producing  upon  you  the  sol- 
emnizing effect  which  I  think  I  could  command  from 
reading,  instead,  a  piece  of  '  Marmion,'  '  Manfred,'  or 
'Childe  Harold.' 

..."  He  had  one  day  left  his  cell  to  give  advice 
to  some  visitors  ;  and  when  he  had  finished,  he  said  to 
them,  '  I  must  now  go  in  again,  but  do  you,  as  you  are 
inclined  to  depart,  first  take  food ;  and  when  you  have 


Alfrea  to  the   Coiijcsstv.  49 

cooked  and  eaten  that  goose  which  is  hanging  on  the 
wall,  go  on  board  your  vessel  in  God's  name  and  return 
home.'  He  then  uttered  a  prayer,  and,  having  blessed 
them,  went  in.  But  they,  as  he  had  bidden  them,  took 
some  food ;  but  having  enough  provisions  of  their 
own,  which  they  had  brought  with  them,  they  did  not 
touch  the  goose. 

"  But  when  they  had  refreshed  themselves  they  tried 
to  go  on  board  their  vessel,  but  a  sudden  storm  utterly 
prevented  them  from  putting  to  sea.  They  were  thus 
detained  seven  days  in  the  island  by  the  roughness  of 
the  waves,  and  yet  they  could  not  call  to  mind  what 
fault  they  had  committed.  They  therefore  returned  to 
have  an  interview  with  the  holy  father,  and  to  lament 
to  him  their  detention.  He  exhorted  them  to  be  pa- 
tient, and  on  the  seventh  day  came  out  to  console  their 
sorrow,  and  to  give  them  pious  exhortations.  When, 
however,  he  had  entered  the  house  in  which  they  were 
stopping,  and  saw  that  the  goose  was  not  eaten,  he 
reproved  their  disobedience  with  mild  countenance  and 
in  gentle  language  :  '  Have  you  not  left  the  goose  still 
hanging  in  its  place }  What  wonder  is  it  that  the 
storm  has  prevented  your  departure  .'*  Put  it  immedi- 
ately into  the  caldron,  and  boil  and  cat  it,  that  the  sea 
may  become  tranquil,  and  you  may  return  home.' 

"  They  immediately  did  as  he  commanded ;  and  it 
happened  most  wonderfully  that  the  moment  the  kettle 
began  to  boil  the  wind  began  to  cease,  and  the  waves 


50  The  Jr^Leasiires  oj  raitn. 

to  be  still.  Having  finished  their  repast,  and  seeing 
that  the  sea  was  calm,  they  went  on  board,  and  to  their 
great  delight,  though  with  shame  for  their  neglect, 
reached  home  with  a  fair  wind.  Now  this,  as  I  have 
related,  I  did  not  pick  up  from  any  chance  authority, 
but  I  had  it  from  one  of  those  who  were  present,  a 
most  reverend  monk  and  priest  of  the  same  monastery, 
Cynemund,  who  still  lives,  known  to  many  in  the 
neighbourhood  for  his  years  and  the  purity  of  his 
life." 

I  hope  that  the  memory  of  this  story,  which,  think- 
ing it  myself  an  extremely  pretty  one,  I  have  given 
you,  not  only  for  a  type  of  sincerity  and  simplicity,  but 
for  an  illustration  of  obedience,  may  at  all  events  quit 
you,  for  good  and  all,  of  the  notion  that  the  believers 
and  witnesses  of  miracle  were  poetical  persons.  Say- 
mg  no  more  on  the  head  of  that  allegation,  I  proceed 
to  the  Dean's  second  one,  which  I  cannot  but  interpret 
as  also  intended  to  be  injurious, —that  they  were  art- 
less and  childish  ones  ;  and  that  because  of  this  rude- 
ness and  puerility,  their  motives  and  opinions  would 
not  be  shared  by  any  statesmen  of  the  present  day. 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  Edward  the  Confessor  was 
himself  in  many  respects  of  really  childish  tempera- 
ment ;  not  therefore,  perhaps,  as  I  before  suggested  to 
you,  less  venerable.  But  the  age  of  which  we  are  ex- 
amining the  progress,  was  by  no  means  represented  or 


Alfred  to  the   Confcssoi"..  51 

governed  by  men  of  similar  disposition.  It  was  emi- 
nently productive  of  —  it  was  altogether  governed, 
guided,  and  instructed  by  —  men  of  the  widest  and 
most  brilliant  faculties,  whether  constructive  or  specu- 
lative, that  the  world  till  then  had  seen;- men  whose 
acts  became  the  romance,  whose  thoughts  the  wisdom, 
and  whose  arts  the  treasure,  of  a  thousand  years  of 
futurity. 

I  warned  you  at  the  close  of  last  lecture  against 
the  too  agreeable  vanity  of  supposing  that  the  Evan- 
gelization of  the  world  began  at  St.  Martin's,  Canter- 
bury. Again  and  again  you  will  indeed  find  the  stream 
of  the  Gospel  contracting  itself  into  narrow  channels, 
and  appearing,  after  long-concealed  filtration,  through 
veins  of  unmeasured  rock,  with  the  bright  resilience 
of  a  mountain  spring.  But  you  will  find  it  the  only 
candid,  and  therefore  the  only  wise,  way  of  research, 
to  look  in  each  era  of  Christendom  for  the  minds  of 
culminating  power  in  all  its  brotherhood  of  nations  ; 
and,  careless  of  local  impulse,  momentary  zeal,  pictur- 
esque incident,  or  vaunted  miracle,  to  fasten  your  at- 
tention upon  the  force  of  character  in  the  men,  whom, 
over  each  newly-converted  race,  Heaven  visibly  sets  for 
its  shepherds  and  kings,  to  bring  forth  judgment  unto 
victory.  Of  these  I  will  name  to  you,  as  messengers 
of  God  and  masters  of  men,  five  monks  and  five  kings  ; 
in  whose  arms  during  the  range  of  swiftly  gainful 
centuries  which  we  are  following,  the  life  of  the  world 


52  -The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

lay  as  a  nursling  babe.  Remember,  in  their  successive 
order, — of  monks,  St.  Jerome,  St.  Augustine,  St.  Mar- 
tin, St.  Benedict,  and  St.  Gregory;  of  kings, — and 
your  national  vanity  may  be  surely  enough  appeased  in 
recognizing  two  of  them  for  Saxon, — Theodoric,  Char- 
lemagne, Alfred,  Canute,  and  the  Confessor.  I  will 
read  three  passages  to  you,  out  of  the  literal  words  of 
three  of  these  ten  men,  without  saying  whose  they  are, 
that  you  may  compare  them  with  the  best  and  most 
exalted  you  have  read  expressing  the  philosophy,  the 
religion,  and  the  policy  of  to-day,  — from  which  I  admit, 
with  Dean  Stanley,  but  with  a  far  different  meaning 
from  his,  that  they  are  indeed  separate  for  .evermore. 
I  give  you  first,  for  an  example  of  Philosophy,  a 
single  sentence,  containing  all  —  so  far  as  I  can  myself 
discern  —  that  it  is  possible  for  us  to  know,  or  well  for 
us  to  believe,  respecting  the  world  and  its  laws. 

"  Of  God's  Univers.al  Providence,  ruling  all,  and  com- 
prising ALL. 

"  Wherefore  the  great  and  mighty  God ;  He  that  made 
man  a  reasonable  creature  of  soul  and  body,  and  He  that  did 
neither  let  him  pass  unpunished  for  his  sin,  nor  yet  excluded 
him  from  mercy ;  He  that  gave,  both  unto  good  and  bad, 
essence  with  the  stones,  power  of  production  with  the  trees, 
senses  with  the  beasts  of  the  field,  and  understanding  with  the 
angels ;  He  from  whom  is  all  being,  beauty,  form,  and  order, 
number,  weight,  and    measure ;    He  from  whom   all    nature, 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  53 

mean  and  excellent,  all  seeds  of  form,  all  forms  of  seed,  all 
motion,  both  of  forms  and  seeds,  derive  and  have  being  ;  He 
that  gave  flesh  the  original  beauty,  strength,  propagation,  form 
and  shape,  health  and  symmetry ;  He  that  gave  the  unreason- 
able soul,  sense,  memory,  and  appetite  ;  the  reasonable,  be- 
sides these,  fantasy,  understanding,  and  will ;  He,  I  say, 
having  left  neither  heaven,  nor  earth,  nor  angel,  nor  man,  no, 
nor  the  most  base  and  contemptible  creature,  neither  the  bird's 
feather,  nor  the  herb's  flower,  nor  the  tree's  leaf,  without  the 
true  harmony  of  their  parts,  and  peaceful  concord  of  compo- 
sition :  —  It  is  in  no  way  credible  that  He  would  leave  the 
kingdoms  of  men  and  their  bondages  and  freedom  loose  and 
uncomprised  in  the  laws  of  His  eternal  providence."  * 

This  for  the  philosophy. f  Next,  I  take  for  example 
of  the  Religion  of  our  ancestors,  a  prayer,  personally 
and  passionately  offered  to  the  Deity  conceived  as  you 
have  this  moment  heard. 

"  O  Thou  who  art  the  Father  of  that  Son  which  has  awak- 
ened us,  and  yet  urgeth  us  out  of  the  sleep  of  our  sins,  and 
exhorteth  us  tliat  we  become  Thine  ;  "  (note  you  that,  for  ap- 
prehension of  what  Redemption  means,  against  your  base  and 
cowardly  modern  notion  of  'scaping  whipping.  Not  to  take 
away  the  Punishment  of  Sin,  but  by  His  Resurrection  to  raise 
us  out  of  the  sleep  of  sin  itself !     Compare  the  legend  at  the 

*  From  St.  Augustine's  '  Citie  of  God,'  Book  V.,  cli.  xi.  (English  trans., 
printed  by  George  Eld,  1610.) 

t   Here  one  of    the  "Stones  of    Westminster"  was  shown  and  commented 


54  The  Pleastires  of  Faith. 

feet  of  the  Lion  of  the  Tribe  of  Judah  in  the  golden  Gospel 
of  Chades  le  Chauve  *  :  — 

"Hic  Leo  Surgendo  portas  confregit  Averni 
Qui  nunquam  dormit,  nusquam  dormitat  in  jEvum  ; ") 

"  to  Thee,  Lord,  I  pray,  who  art  the  supreme  truth ;  for  all  the 
truth  that  is,  is  truth  from  Thee.  Thee  I  implore,  O  Lord, 
who  art  the  highest  wisdom.  Through  Thee  are  wise  all  those 
that  are  so.  Thou  art  the  true  life,  and  through  Thee  are 
living  all  those  that  are  so.  Thou  art  the  supreme  felicity, 
and  from  Thee  all  have  become  happy  that  are  so.  Thou  art 
the  highest  good,  and  from  Thee  all  beauty  springs.  Thou 
art  the  intellectual  light,  and  from  Thee  man  derives  his  un- 
derstanding. 

''To  Thee,  O  God,  I  call  and  speak.  Hear,  O  hear  me, 
Lord  !  for  Thou  art  my  God  and  my  Lord ;  my  Father  and 
my  Creator ;  my  ruler  and  my  hope  ;  my  wealth  and  my  hon- 
our ;  my  house,  my  country,  my  salvation,  and  my  life  !  Hear, 
hear  me,  O  Lord  !  Few  of  Thy  servants  comprehend  Thee. 
But  Thee  alone  I  love,\  indeed,  above  all  other  things.  Thee 
I  seek  :  Thee  I  will  follow  :  Thee  I  am  ready  to  serve.  Un- 
der Thy  power  I  desire  to  abide,  for  Thou  alone  art  the  Sov- 
ereign of  all.     I  pray  Thee  to  command  me  as  Thou  wilt." 

You  see  this  prayer  is  simply  the  expansion  of  that 
clause  of  the   Lord's  Prayer  which  most  men  eagerly 

*  At  Munich:  the  leaf  has  been  exquisitely  drawn  and  legend  communicated 
to  me  by  Professor  Westvvood.      It  is  written  in  gold  on  purple. 

t  Meaning  —  not  tliat  lie  is  of  those  few,  but  that,  without  comprehending,  at 
least,  as  a  dog,  he  can  love. 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  55 

omit  from  it, — Fiat  voluntas  tiia.  In  being  so,  it  sums 
the  Christian  prayer  of  all  ages.  See  now,  in  the  third 
place,  how  far  this  king's  letter  I  am  going  to  read  to 
you  sums  also  Christian  Policy. 

"  Wherefore  I  render  high  thanks  to  Almighty  God,  for  the 
happy  accomplishment  of  all  the  desires  which  I  have  set 
before  me,  and  for  the  satisfying  of  my  every  wish. 

"  Now  therefore,  be  it  known  to  you  all,  that  to  Almighty 
God  Himself  I  have,  on  my  knees,  devoted  my  life,  to  the 
end  that  in  all  things  I  may  do  justice,  and  with  justice  and 
lightness  rule  the  kingdoms  and  peoples  under  me ;  through- 
out everything  preserving  an  impartial  judgment.  If,  hereto- 
fore, I  have,  through  being,  as  young  men  are,  impulsive  or 
careless,  done  anything  unjust,  I  mean,  with  God's  help,  to 
lose  no  time  in  remedying  my  fault.  To  which  end  I  call 
to  witness  my  counsellors,  to  whom  I  have  entrusted  the  coun- 
sels of  the  kingdom,  and  I  charge  them  that  by  no  means, 
be  it  through  fear  of  me,  or  the  favour  of  any  other  powerful 
personage,  to  consent  to  any  injustice,  or  to  suffer  any  to  shoot 
out  in  any  part  of  my  kingdom.  I  charge  all  my  viscounts 
and  those  set  over  my  whole  kingdom,  as  they  wish  to  keep 
my  friendship  or  their  own  safety,  to  use  no  unjust  force  to 
any  man,  rich  or  jioor  ;  let  all  men,  nol)le  and  not  noble,  rich 
and  poor  alike,  l)e  able  to  obtain  their  rights  under  the  law's 
justice;  and  from  that  law  let  there  be  no  deviation,  either 
to  favour  tlie  king  or  any  powerful  person,  nor  to  raise  money 
for  me.  1  have  no  need  of  m(jney  raised  by  what  is  unfair. 
I   also   would  have  you  know   that  I  go  now   to  make  peace 


5 6  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

and  firm  treaty  by  the  counsels  of  all  my  subjects,  with  those 
nations  and  people  who  wished,  had  it  been  possible  for  them 
to  do  so,  which  it  was  not,  to  deprive  us  alike  of  kingdom 
and  of  life.  God  brought  down  their  strength  to  nought :  and 
may  He  of  His  benign  love  preserve  us  on  our  throne  and  in 
honour.  Lastly,  when  I  have  made  peace  with  the  neighbour- 
ing nations,  and  settled  and  pacified  all  my  dominions  in  the 
East,  so  that  we  may  nowhere  have  any  war  or  enmity  to  fear, 
I  mean  to  come  to  England  this  summer,  as  soon  as  I  can  fit 
out  vessels  to  sail.  My  reason,  however,  in  sending  this  letter 
first  is  to  let  all  the  people  of  my  kingdom  share  in  the  joy 
of  my  welfare  :  for  as  you  yourselves  know,  I  have  never  spared 
myself  or  my  labour ;  nor  will  I  ever  do  so,  where  my  people 
are  really  in  want  of  some  good  that  I  can  do  them." 

What  think  you  now,  in  candour  and  honour,  you 
youth  of  the  latter  days,  —  what  think  you  of  these 
types  of  the  thought,  devotion,  and  government,  which 
not  in  words,  but  pregnant  and  perpetual  fact,  ani- 
mated these  which  you  have  been  accustomed  to  call 
the  Dark  Ages  ? 

The  Philosophy  is  Augustine's  ;  the  Prayer  Alfred's  ; 
and  the  Letter  Canute's. 

And,  whatever  you  may  feel  respecting  the  beauty 
or  wisdom  of  these  sayings,  be  assured  of  one  thing 
above  all,  that  they  are  sincere  ;  and  of  another,  less 
often  observed,  that  they  are  joyful. 

Be  assured,  in  the  first  place,  that  they  are  sincere. 
The   ideas  of  diplomacy  and  priestcraft  are  of  recent 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  57 

times.  No  false  knight  or  lying  priest  ever  prospered, 
I  believe,  in  any  age,  but  certainly  not  in  the  dark 
ones.  Men  prospered  then,  only  in  following  openly- 
declared  purposes,  and  preaching  candidly  beloved  and 
trusted  creeds. 

And  that  they  did  so  prosper,  in  the  degree  in  which 
they  accepted  and  proclaimed  the  Christian  Gospel, 
may  be  seen  by  any  of  you  in  your  historical  reading, 
however  partial,  if  only  you  will  admit  the  idea  that  it 
could  be  so,  and  was  likely  to  be  so.  You  are  all  of 
you  in  the  habit  of  supposing  that  temporal  prosperity 
is  owing  either  to  worldly  chance  or  to  worldly  pru- 
dence ;  and  is  never  granted  in  any  visible  relation  to 
states  of  religious  temper.  Put  that  treacherous  doubt 
away  from  you,  with  disdain  ;  take  for  basis  of  reason- 
ing the  noble  postulate,  that  the  elements  of  Christian 
faith  arc  sound,  —  instead  of  the  base  one,  that  they 
are  deceptive  ;  reread  the  great  story  of  the  world  in 
that  light,  and  see  what  a  vividly  real,  yet  miraculous 
tenor,  it  will  then  bear  to  you. 

Their  faith  then,  I  tell  you  first,  was  sincere  ;  I  tell 
you  secondly  that  it  was,  in  a  degree  few  of  us  can  now 
conceive,  joyful.  We  continually  hear  of  the  trials, 
sometimes  of  the  victories,  of  Faith, — but  scarcely 
ever  of  its  pleasures.  Whereas,  at  this  time,  you  will 
find  that  the  chief  delight  of  all  good  men  was  in  the 
recognition  of  the  goodness  and  wisdom  of  the  Master, 
who  had  come  to  dwell  with  them  upon  earth.     It  is 


58  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

almost  impossible  for  you  to  conceive  the  vividness  of 
this  sense  in  them  ;  it  is  totally  impossible  for  you  to 
conceive  the  comfort,  peace,  and  force  of  it.  In  every- 
thing that  you  now  do  or  seek,  you  expose  yourselves 
to  countless  miseries  of  shame  and  disappointment, 
because  in  your  doing  you  depend  on  nothing  but  your 
own  powers,  and  in  seeking  choose  only  your  own 
gratification.  You  cannot  for  the  most  part  conceive 
of  any  work  but  for  your  own  interests,  or  the  interests 
of  others  about  whom  you  are  anxious  in  the  same 
faithless  way ;  everything  about  which  passion  is  ex- 
cited in  you  or  skill  exerted  is  some  object  of  mate- 
rial life,  and  the  idea  of  doing  anything  except  for  your 
own  praise  or  profit  has  narrowed  itself  into  little  more 
than  the  precentor's  invitation  to  the  company  with 
little  voice  and  less  practice  to  "  sing  to  the  praise  and 
glory  of  God." 

I  have  said  that  you  cannot  imagine  the  feeling  of 
the  energy  of  daily  life  applied  in  the  real  meaning  of 
those  words.  You  cannot  imagine  it,  but  you  can 
prove  it.  Are  any  of  you  willing,  simply  as  a  philo- 
sophical experiment  in  the  greatest  of  sciences,  to 
adopt  the  principles  and  feelings  of  these  men  of  a 
thousand  years  ago  for  a  given  time,  say  for  a  year ,'' 
It  cannot  possibly  do  you  any  harm  to  try,  and  you 
cannot  possibly  learn  what  is  true  in  these  things, 
without  trying.  If  after  a  year's  experience  of  such 
methof!   you   find  yourself    no  happier  than  before,  at 


Alfred  to  the   Confessor.  59 

least  you  will  be  able  to  support  your  present  opinions 
at  once  with  more  grace  and  more  modesty ;  having 
conceded  the  trial  it  asked  for,  to  the  opposite  side. 
Nor  in  acting  temporarily  on  a  faith  you  do  not  see  to 
be  reasonable,  do  you  compromise  your  own  integrity 
more,  than  in  conducting,  under  a  chemist's  directions, 
an  experiment  of  which  he  foretells  inexplicable  conse- 
quences. And  you  need  not  doubt  the  power  you 
possess  over  your  own  minds  to  do  this.  Were  faith 
not  voluntary,  it  could  not  be  praised,  and  would  not 
be  rewarded. 

If  you  are  minded  thus  to  try,  begin  each  day  with 
Alfred's  prayer, — fiat  voluntas  tua  ;  resolving  that  you 
will  stand  to  it,  and  that  nothing  that  happens  in  the 
course  of  the  day  shall  displease  you.  Then  set  to  any 
work  you  have  in  hand  with  the  sifted  and  purified 
resolution  that  ambition  shall  not  mix  with  it,  nor  love 
of  gain,  nor  desire  of  pleasure  more  than  is  appointed 
for  you ;  and  that  no  anxiety  shall  touch  you  as  to  its 
issue,  nor  any  impatience  nor  regret  if  it  fail.  Imagine 
that  the  thing  is  being  done  through  you,  not  by  you  ; 
that  the  good  of  it  may  never  be  known,  but  that  at 
least,  unless  by  your  rebellion  or  foolishness,  there  can 
come  no  evil  into  it,  nor  wrong  chance  to  it.  Resolve 
also  with  steady  industry  to  do  what  you  can  for  the 
help  of  your  country  and  its  honour,  and  the  honour  of 
its  God  ;  and  that  you  will  not  join  hands  in  its  iniquity, 
nor  tuni  aside  from  its  misery;  and  that  in  all  you  du 


6o  The  Pleasures  of  Faith. 

and  feel  you  will  look  frankly  for  the  immediate  help 
and  direction,  and  to  your  own  consciences,  expressed 
approval,  of  God.  Live  thus,  and  believe,  and  with 
swiftness  of  answer  proportioned  to  the  frankness  of 
the  trust,  most  surely  the  God  of  hope  will  fill  you  with 
all  joy  and  peace  in  believing. 

But,  if  you  will  not  do  this,  if  you  have  not  courage 
nor  heart  enough  to  break  away  the  fetters  of  earth, 
and  take  up  the  sensual  bed  of  it,  and  walk ;  if  you  say 
that  you  are  boimd  to  win  this  thing,  and  become  the 
other  thing,  and  that  the  wishes  of  your  friends,  —  and 
the  interests  of  your  family,  —  and  the  bias  of  your 
genius,  —  and  the  expectations  of  your  college,  —  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  bow-wow-wow  of  the  wild  dog-world, 
must  be  attended  to,  whether  you  like  it  or  no, — then, 
at  least,  for  shame  give  up  talk  about  being  free  or 
independent  creatures  ;  recognize  yourselves  for  slaves 
in  whom  the  thoughts  are  put  in  ward  with  their 
bodies,  and  their  hearts  manacled  with  their  hands  : 
and  then  at  least  also,  for  shame,  if  you  refuse  to  be- 
lieve that  ever  there  were  men  who  gave  their  souls  to 
God,  —  know  and  confess  how  surely  there  are  those 
who  sell  them  to  His  adversary. 


LECTURE    III. 


THE    PLEASURES    OF    DEED, 
Alfred  to  Coeiir  de  Lion. 


LECTURE  III. 
THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED. 


ALFRED   TO   CCEUR    DE   LION. 

IT  was  my  endeavour,  in  the  preceding  lecture,  to 
vindicate  the  thoughts  and  arts  of  our  Saxon  an- 
cestors trom  whatever  scorn  might  lie.coucned  under 
the  terms  applied  to  them  by  Dean  Stanley,  —  '  fantas- 
tic,'and  'childish.'  To-day  my  task  must  be  carried 
forward,  first,  in  asserting  the  grace  in  fantasy,  and 
the  force  in  infancy,  of  the  English  mind,  before  the 
Conquest,  against  the  allegations  contained  in  the 
final  passage  of  Dean  Stanley's  description  of  the  first 
founded  Westminster ;  a  passage  which  accepts  and 
asserts,  more  distinctly  than  any  other  equally  brief 
statement  I  have  met  with,  the  to  my  mind  extremely 
disputable  theory,  that  the  Norman  invasion  was  in 
every  respect  a  sanitary,  moral,  and  intellectual  bless- 
ing to  England,  and  that  the  arrow  which  slew  her 
Harold  was  indeed  the  Arrow  of  the  Lord's  deliv- 
erance. 


64  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

"  The  Abbey  itself,"  says  Dean  Stanley,  —  "  the 
chief  work  of  the  Confessor's  life,  —  was  the  portent 
of  the  mighty  future.  When  Harold  stood  beside  his 
sister  Edith,  on  the  day  of  the  dedication,  and  signed 
his  name  with  hers  as  witness  to  the  Charter  of  the 
Abbey,  he  might  have  seen  that  he  was  sealing  his 
own  doom,  and  preparing  for  his  own  destruction.  The 
solid  pillars,  the  ponderous  arches,  the  huge  edifice, 
with  triple  tower  and  sculptured  stones  and  storied  win- 
dows, that  arose  in  the  place  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
humble  wooden  churches  and  wattled  tenements  of  the 
Saxon  period,  might  have  warned  the  nobles  who  were 
present  that  the  days  of  their  rule  were  numbered, 
and  that  the  avenging,  civilizing,  stimulating  hand  of 
another  and  a  mightier  race  was  at  work,  which  would 
change  the  whole  face  of  their  language,  their  manners, 
their  Church,  and  their  commonwealth.  The  Abbey, 
so  far  exceeding  the  demands  of  the  dull  and  stagnant 
minds  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors,  was  founded  not 
only  in  faith,  but  in  hope  :  in  the  hope  that  England 
had  yet  a  glorious  career  to  run  ;  that  the  line  of  her 
sovereigns  would  not  be  broken,  even  when  the  race  of 
Alfred  had  ceased  to  reign." 

There  must  surely  be  some  among  my  hearers  who 
are  startled,  if  not  offended,  at  being  told  in  the  terms 
which  I  emphasized  in  this  sentence,  that  the  minds 
of  our  Saxon  fathers  were,  although  fantastic,  dull, 
and,  although  childish,  stagnant ;  that  farther,  in  their 


Alfred  to    Cceicr  de  Lion.  65 

fantastic  stagnation,  they  were  savage, — and  in  their 
innocent  dullness,  criminal  ;  so  that  the  future  charac- 
ter and  fortune  of  the  race  depended  on  the  critical 
advent  of  the  didactic  and  disciplinarian  Norman  baron, 
at  once  to  polish  them,  stimulate,  and  chastise. 

Before  I  venture  to  say  a  word  in  distinct  arrest  of 
this  judgment,  I  will  give  you  a  chart,  as  clear  as  the 
facts  observed  in  the  two  previous  lectures  allow,  of 
the  state  and  prospects  of  the  Saxons,  when  this  vio- 
lent benediction  of  conquest  happened  to  them  :  and 
especially  I  would  rescue,  in  the  measure  that  justice 
bids,  the  memory  even  of  their  Pagan  religion  from 
the  general  scorn  in  which  I  used  Carlyle's  description 
of  the  idol  of  ancient  Prussia  as  universally  exponent  of 
the  temper  of  Northern  devotion.  That  Triglaph,  or 
Triglyph  Idol,  (derivation  of  Triglaph  wholly  unknown 
to  me  —  I  use  Triglyph  only  for  my  own  handiest  epi- 
thet), l^.st  set  up,  on  what  is  now  St.  Mary's  hill  in 
Brandenburg,  in  1023,  belonged  indeed  to  a  people 
wonderfully  like  the  Saxons, — geographically  their 
close  neighbours,  —  in  habits  of  life,  and  aspect  of 
native  land,  scarcely  distinguishable  from  them,  —  in 
Carlyle's  words,  a  "strong-boned,  iracund,  herdsman 
and  fisher  people,  highly  averse  to  be  interfered  with, 
in  their  religion  especially,  and  inhabiting  a  moory  flat 
country,  full  of  lakes  and  woods,  but  with  plenty  also 
of  alluvial  mud,  grassy,  frugiferous,  apt  for  the  plough  " 
—  in  all  things  like  the  Saxons,  except,  as   I   read  the 


66  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

matter,  in  that  '  aversion  to  be  interfered  with  '  which 
you  modern  English  think  an  especially  Saxon  charac- 
ter in  you,  —  but  which  is,  on  the  contrary,  you  will 
find  on  examination,  by  no  means  Saxon ;  but  only 
Wendisch,  Czech,  Serbic,  Sclavic, — other  hard  names 
I  could  easily  find  for  it  among  the  tribes  of  that  vehe- 
mently heathen  old  Preussen  —  "  resolutely  worshipful 
of  places  of  oak  trees,  of  wooden  or  stone  idols,  of 
Bangputtis,  Patkullos,  and  I  know  not  what  diabolic 
dumb  blocks."  Your  English  "dislike  to  be  interfered 
with "  is  in  absolute  fellowship  with  these,  but  only 
gathers  itself  in  its  places  of  Stalks,  or  chimneys,  in- 
stead of  oak  trees,  round  its  idols  of  iron,  instead  of 
wood,  diabolically  vocal  now ;  strident,  and  sibilant, 
instead  of  dumb. 

Far  other  than  these,  their  neighbour  Saxons,  Jutes 
and  Angles! — tribes  between  whom  the  distinctions 
are  of  no  moment  whatsoever,  except  that  an  English 
boy  or  girl  may  with  grace  remember  that  '  Old  Eng- 
land,' exactly  and  strictly  so  called,  was  the  small  dis- 
trict in  the  extreme  south  of  Denmark,  totally  with  its 
islands  estimable  at  sixty  miles  square  of  dead  flat  land. 
Directly  south  of  it,  the  definitely  so-called  Saxons 
held  the  western  shore  of  Holstein,  with  the  estuary 
of  the  Elbe,  and  the  sea-mark  isle,  Heligoland.  But 
since  the  principal  temple  of  Saxon  worship  was  close 
to  Leipsic,*  we  may  include  under  our  general  term, 

*  Turner,  vol,  i.,  p.  22^, 


'Alfred  to    Cceuj'  dc  Lion.  67 

Saxons,  the  inhabitants  of  the  whole  level  district  of 
North  Germany,  from  the  Gulf  of  Flensburg  to  the 
Hartz ;  and,  eastward,  all  the  country  watered  by  the 
Elbe  as  far  as  Saxon  Switzerland. 

Of  the  character  of  this  race  I  will  not  here  speak 
at  any  length  :  only  note  of  it  this  essential  point,  that 
their  religion  was  at  once  more  practical  and  more  im- 
aginative than  that  of  the  Norwegian  peninsula  ;  the 
Norse  religion  being  the  conception  rather  of  natural 
than  moral  powers,  but  the  Saxon,  primarily  of  moral, 
as  the  lords  of  natural  —  their  central  divine  image, 
Irminsul,*  holding  the  standard  of  peace  in  her  right 
hand,  a  balance  in  her  left.  Such  a  religion  may  de- 
generate into  mere  slaughter  and  rapine ;  but  it  has 
the  making  in  it  of  the  noblest  men. 

More  practical  at  all  events,  whether  for  good  or 
evil,  in  this  trust  in  a  future  reward  for  courage  and 
purity,  than  the  mere  Scandinavian  awe  of  existing 
Earth  and  Cloud,  the  Saxon  religion  was  also  more 
imaginative,  in  its  nearer  conception  of  human  feeling 
in  divine  creatures.  And  when  this  wide  hope  and 
high  reverence  had  distinct  objects  of  worship  and 
prayer,  offered  to  them  by  Christianity,  the  Saxons 
easily  became  pure,  passionate,  and  thoughtful  Chris- 
tians ;  while  the  Normans,  to  tlie  last,  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  apprehending  the  Christian  teaching  of  the 
Franks,  and  still  deny  the  power  of  Christianity,  even 
when  they  Ikuc  become  inveterate  in   its  form. 

•  Properly  plural  'Images' — Irminsul  and  Irminsula. 


68  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

Quite  the  deepest-thoughted  creatures  of  the  then 
animate  world,  it  seems  to  me,  these  Saxon  ploughmen 
of  the  sand  or  the  sea,  with  their  worshipped  deity  of 
Beauty  and  Justice,  a  red  rose  on  her  banner,  for  best 
of  gifts,  and  in  her  right  hand,  instead  of  a  sword,  a 
balance,  for  due  doom,  without  wrath,  —  of  retribution 
in  her  left.  Far  other  than  the  Wends,  though  stub- 
born enough,  they  too,  in  battle  rank, — seven  times 
rising  from  defeat  against  Charlemagne,  and  unsubdued 
but  by  death — yet,  by  no  means  in  that  John  Bull's 
manner  of  yours,  'averse  to  be  interfered  with,'  in  their 
opinions,  or  their  religion.  Eagerly  docile  on  the 
contrary  —  joyfully  reverent  —  instantly  and  gratefully 
acceptant  of  whatever  better  insight  or  oversight  a 
stranger  could  bring  them,  of  the  things  of  God  or 
man. 

And  let  me  here  ask  you  especially  to  take  account 
of  that  origin  of  the  true  bearing  of  the  Flag  of 
England,  the  Red  Rose.  Her  own  madness  defiled 
afterwards  alike  the  white  and  red,  into  images  of  the 
paleness,  or  the  crimson,  of  death  ;  but  the  Saxon  Rose 
was  the  symbol  of  heavenly  beauty  and  peace. 

I  told  you  in  my  first  lecture  that  one  swift  require- 
ment in  our  school  would  be  to  produce  a  beautiful 
map  of  England,  including  old  Northumberland,  giving 
the  whole  country,  in  its  real  geography,  between  the 
Frith  of  Forth  and  Straits  of  Dover,  and  with  only  six 
sites  of  habitation  given,  besides  those  of  Edinburgh 


Alfred  to   Cceur  de  Lion.  69 

and  London,  —  namely,  those  of  Canterbury  and  Win- 
chester, York  and  Lancaster,  Holy  Island  and  Melrose ; 
the  latter  instead  of  lona,  because,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  influence  of  St.  Columba  expires  with  the  advance 
of  Christianity,  while  that  of  Cuthbert  of  Melrose  con- 
nects itself  with  the  most  sacred  feelings  of  the  entire 
Northumbrian  kingdom,  and  Scottish  border,  down 
to  the  days  of  Scott  —  wreathing  also  into  its  circle 
many  of  the  legends  of  Arthur.  Will  you  forgive  my 
connecting  the  personal  memory  of  having  once  had 
a  wild  rose  gathered  for  me,  in  the  glen  of  Thomas  the 
Rhymer,  by  the  daughter  of  one  of  the  few  remaining 
Catholic  houses  of  Scotland,  with  the  pleasure  I  have 
in  reading  to  you  this  following  true  account  of  the 
origin  of  the  name  of  St.  Cuthbcrt's  birthplace; — the 
rather  because  I  owe  it  to  friendship  of  the  same  date, 
with  Mr.  Cockburn  Muir,  of  Melrose. 

"To  those  who  have  eyes'to  read  it,"  says  Mr.  Muir, 
"the  name  'Melrose'  is  written  full  and  fair,  on  the 
fair  face  of  all  this  reach  of  the  valley.  The  name  is 
anciently  spelt  Mailros,  and  later,  Malros,  never  Mul- 
ros ;  ('  Mul  '  being  the  Celtic  word  taken  to  mean 
'bare').  Ros  is  Rose;  the  forms  Meal  or  Mol  imply 
great  quantity  or  number.  Thus  Malros  means  the 
place  of  many  roses. 

"This  is  precisely  the  notable  characteristic  of  the 
neighbourhood.  The  wild  rose  is  indigenous.  There 
is  no  nook  nor  cranny,  no  bank  nor  brae,  which  is  not. 


70  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

in  the  time  of  roses,  ablaze  with  their  exuberant  loveli- 
.ness.  In  gardens,  the  cultured  rose  is  so  prolific  that 
it  spreads  literally  like  a  weed.  But  it  is  worth  sug- 
gestion that  the  word  may  be  of  the  same  stock  as  the 
Hebrew  rosJi  (translated  ros  by  the  Septuagint),  mean- 
ing cJiicf,  principal,  while  it  is  also  the  name  of  some 
flower ;  but  of  whicJi  flower  is  now  unknown.  Affini- 
ties of  rosJi  are  not  far  to  seek ;  Sanskrit,  Raj\?i), 
Ra{i3.)ni ;  Latin,  Rcw,  Reg-(\nn.)." 

I  leave  it  to  Professor  Max  Muller  to  certify  or  cor- 
rect for  you  the  details  of  Mr.  Cockburn's  research,*  — 
this  main  head  of  it  I  can  positively  confirm,  that  in  old 


*  I  had  not  time  to  quote  it  fully  in  the  lecture ;  and  in  my  ignorance,  alike 
of  Keltic  and  Hebrew,  can  only  submit  it  here  to  the  reader's  examination. 
"  The  ancient  Cognizance  of  the  town  confirms  this  etymology  beyond  doubt, 
with  customary  heraldic  precision.  The  shield  bears  a  J?ose ;  with  a  Maitl,  as 
the  exact  phonetic  equivalent  for  the  expletive.  If  the  herald  had  needed  to 
express  '  bare  promontory,'  quite  certainly  he  would  have  managed  it  somehow. 
Not  only  this,  the  Earls  of  Haddington  were  first  created  Earls  of  Melrose 
(1619)  ;  and  their  Shield,  quarterly,  is  charged,  for  Melrose,  in  2nd  and  3rd  (fesse 
wavy  between)  three  Roses  gu. 

"  Beyond  this  ground  of  certainty,  we  may  indulge  in  a  little  excursus  into 
lingual  affinities  of  wide  range.  The  root  mol  is  clear  enough.  It  is  of  the  same 
stock  as  the  Greek  ?«a/rt,  Latin  ;«?^/(;'?n«),  and  Hebrew  mUa.  'Eat,  Rose?  W'e 
call  her  Queen  of  Flowers,  and  since  before  the  Persian  poets  made  much  of 
her,  she  was  everywhere  Regina  Floriim.  Why  should  not  the  name  mean 
.-.imply  the  Queen,  the  Chief?  Now,  so  few  who  know  Keltic  know  also 
Hebrew,  and  so  few  who  know  Hebrew  know  also  Keltic,  that  few  know  the  sur- 
prising extent  of  the  affinity  that  exists  —  clear  as  day  —  between  the  Keltic  and 
the  Hebrew  vocabularies.  That  the  word  Rose  may  be  a  case  in  point  is  not 
hazardously  speculative." 


Alfred  to    Cceiir  de  Lio?i.  71 

Scotch, — that  of  Bishop  Douglas, —  the  word  '  Rois  ' 
stands  alike  for  King,  and  Rose. 

Summing  now  the  features  I  have  too  shortly  speci- 
fied in  the  Saxon  character,  —  its  imagination,  its 
docility,  its  love  of  knowledge,  and  its  love  of  beauty, 
you  will  be  prepared  to  accept  my  conclusive  state- 
ment, that  they  gave  rise  to  a  form  of  Christian  faith 
which  appears  to  me,  in  the  present  state  of  my  knowl- 
edge, one  of  the  purest  and  most  intellectual  ever  at- 
tained in  Christendom; — never  yet  understood,  partly 
because  of  the  extreme  rudeness  of  its  expression  in 
the  art  of  manuscripts,  and  partly  because,  on  account 
of  its  very  purity,  it  sought  no  expression  in  architec- 
ture, being  a  religion  of  daily  life,  and  humble  lodging. 
For  these  two  practical  reasons,  first;  —  and  for  this 
more  weighty  third,  that  the  intellectual  character  of  it 
is  at  the  same  time  most  truly,  as  Dean  Stanley  told 
you,  childlike  ;  showing  itself  in  swiftness  of  imagina- 
tive apprehension,  and  in  the  fearlessly  candid  applica- 
tion of  great  principles  to  small  things.  Its  character 
in  this  kind  may  be  instantly  felt  by  any  sympathetic 
and  gentle  person  who  will  read  carefully  the  book  I 
have  already  quoted  to  you,  the  Venerable  Bede's  life 
of  St.  Cuthbert  ;  and  the  intensity  and  sincerity  of  it 
in  the  highest  orders  of  the  laity,  by  simply  counting 
the  members  of  Saxon  Royal  families  who  ended  their 
lives  in  monasteries. 

Now,  at  the  very  moment  when  this  faith,  innocence, 


72  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

and  ingenuity  were  on  the  point  of  springing  up  into 
their  fruitage,  comes  the  Northern  invasion ;  of  the 
real  character  of  which  you  can  gain  a  far  truer  esti- 
mate by  studying  Alfred's  former  resolute  contest  with 
and  victory  over  the  native  Norman  in  his  paganism, 
than  by  your  utmost  endeavours  to  conceive  the  char- 
acter of  the  afterwards  invading  Norman,  disguised, 
but  not  changed,  by  Christianity.  The  Norman  could 
not,  in  the  nature  of  him,  become  a  Christian  at  all  ; 
and  he  never  did;  —  he  only  became,  at  his  best,  the 
enemy  of  the  Saracen.  What  he  was,  and  what  alone 
he  was  capable  of  being,  I  will  try  to-day  to  explain. 

And  here  I  must  advise  you  that  in  all  points  of. 
history  relating  to  the  period  between  800  and  1 200, 
you  will  find  M.  Viollet  le  Due,  incidentally  throughout 
his  'Dictionary  of  Architecture,'  the  best-informed, 
most  intelligent,  and  most  thoughtful  of  guides.  His 
knowledge  of  architecture,  carried  down  into  the  most 
minutely  practical  details,  —  (which  are  often  the  most 
significant),  and  embracing,  over  the  entire  surface  of 
France,  the  buildings  even  of  the  most  secluded  vil- 
lages ;  his  artistic  enthusiasm,  balanced  by  the  acutest 
sagacity,  and  his  patriotism,  by  the  frankest  candour, 
render  his  analysis  of  history  during  that  active  and 
constructive  period  the  most  valuable  known  to  me, 
and  certainly,  in  its  field,  exhaustive.  Of  the  later 
nationality  his  account  is  imperfect,  owing  to  his  pro. 
fessional    interest   in  the   mere  science  of  architecture, 


Alfred  to    Cceur  de  Lion.  Jt, 

and  comparative  insensibility  to  the  power  of  sculpture ; 
—  but  of  the  time  with  which  we  are  now  concerned, 
whatever  he  tells  you  must  be  regarded  with  grateful 
attention. 

I  introduce,  therefore,  the  Normans  to  you,  on  their 
first  entering  France,  under  his  descriptiv^e  terms  of 
them.* 

"  As  soon  as  they  were  established  on  the  soil,  these 
barbarians  became  the  most  hardy  and  active  builders. 
Within  the  space  of  a  century  and  a  half,  they  had 
covered  the  country  on  which  they  had  definitely 
landed,  with  religious,  monastic,  and  civil  edifices,  of 
an  extent  and  richness  then  little  common.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  suppose  that  they  had  brought  from  Norway  the 
elements  of  art,t  but  they  were  possessed  by  a  per- 
sisting and  penetrating  spirit  ;  their  brutal  force  did 
not  want  for  grandeur.  Conquerors,  they  raised  castles 
to  assure  their  domination  ;  they  soon  recognized  the 
Moral  force  of  the  clergy,  and  endowed  it  richly. 
Eager  always  to  attain  their  end,  when  once  they  saw 
it,  they  never  left  one  of  tJieir  enterprises  nnfinis/ied,  and 
in  that  they  differed  completely  from  the  Southern 
inhabitants  of  Gaul.  Tenacious  extremely,  they  were 
perhaps  the  only  ones  among  the  barbarians  estab- 
lished in  France  who  had  ideas  of  order ;  the  only  ones 

•  Article  "Architecture,"  vol.  i.,  p.  138. 

t  They  liaJ  brought  some,  of  a  variously  Charybdic,  Serpentine,  and  Diabolic 
character.'  -  J.  K. 


74  The  Pleastires  of  Deed. 

who  knew  how  to  preserve  their  conquests,  and  com- 
pose a  state.  They  found  the  lemains  of  the  Car- 
thaginian arts  on  the  territory  where  they  planted 
themselves,  they  mingled  with  those  their  national 
genius,  positive,  grand,  and  yet  supple." 

Supple,  'Delie,' — capable  of  change  and  play  of  the 
mental  muscle,  in  the  way  that  savages  are  not.  I  do 
not,  myself,  grant  this  suppleness  to  the  Norman,  the 
less  because  another  sentence  of  M.  le  Due's,  occur- 
ring incidentally  in  his  account  of  the  archivolt,  is  of 
extreme  counter-significance,  and  wide  application. 
"The  Norman  arch,"  he  says,  "is  never  derived  from 
traditional  classic  forms,  but  only  from  mathematical 
arrangement  of  line."  Yes  ;  that  is  true  :  the  Norman 
arch  is  never  derived  from  classic  forms.  The  cathe- 
dral,* whose  aisles  you  saw  or  might  have  seen,  yester- 
day, interpenetrated  with  light,  whose  vaults  you  might 
have  heard  prolonging  the  sweet  divisions  of  majestic 
sound,  would  have  been  built  in  that  stately  symme- 
try by  Norman  law,  though  never  an  arch  at  Rome  had 
risen  round  her  field  of  blood, — though  never  her 
Sublician  bridge  had  been  petrified  by  her  Augustan 
pontifices.  But  the  decoration,  though  not  the  struc- 
ture of  those  arches,  they  owed  to  another  race,! 
whose  words  they  stole  without  understanding,  though 
three    centuries    before,    the    Saxon    understood,    and 

*  Of  Oxford,  during  the  afternoon  service, 
t  See  the  concluding  section  of  the  lecture. 


Alfred  to   Cceiir  dc  Lion.  75 

used,  to  express  the  most  solemn  majesty  of  his  King- 
hood,  — 

"EGO   EDGAR,    TOTIVS   ALBIONIS"  — 

not  Rex,  that  would  have  meant  the  King  of  Kent  or 
Mercia,  not  of  England,  —  no,  nor  Imperator ;  that 
would  have  meant  only  the  profane  power  of  Rome, 
but  BASILEVS,  meaning  a  King  who  reigned  with 
sacred  authority  given  by  Heaven  and  Christ. 

With  far  meaner  thoughts,  both  of  themselves  and 
their  powers,  the  Normans  set  themselves  to  build 
impregnable  military  walls,  and  sublime  religious  ones, 
\\\  the  best  possible  practical  ways  ;  but  they  no  more 
made  books  of  their  church  fronts  than  of  their  bastion 
flanks  ;  and  cared,  in  the  religion  they  accepted,  nei- 
ther for  its  sentiments  nor  its  promises,  but  only  for 
its  immediate  results  on  national  order. 

As  I  read  'them,  they  were  men  wholly  of  this 
world,  bent  on  doing  the  most  in  it,  and  making  the 
best  of  it  that  they  could  ;  —  men,  to  their  death,  of 
Deed,  never  pausing,  changing,  repenting,  or  anticipat- 
ing, more  than  the  completed  square,  ai/tw  \\nyyov,  of 
their  battle,  their  keep,  and  their  cloister.  Soldiers 
before  and  after  everything,  they  learned  the  lockings 
and  bracings  of  their  stones  primarily  in  defence 
against  the  battering-ram  and  the  projectile,  and  es- 
teemed the  pure  circular  arch  f<jr  its  distributed  and 
equal  strength  more  than   for  its  beauty.      "  I   believe 


76  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

again,"  says  M.  le  Due,*  "  that  the  feudal  castle  never 
arrived  at  its  perfectness  till  after  the  Norman  inva- 
sion, and  that  this  race  of  the  North  was  the  first  to 
apply  a  defensive  system  under  unquestionable  laws, 
soon  followed  by  the  nobles  of  the  Continent,  after 
they  had,  at  their  own  expense,  learned  their  supe- 
riority." 

The  next  sentence  is  a  curious  one.  I  pray  your 
attention  to  it.  "  The  defensive  system  of  the  Norman 
is  born  of  a  profound  sentiment  of  distrust  and  cu)ming, 
foj-eign  to  the  character  of  the  Frank."  You  will  find  in 
all  my  previous  notices  of  the  French,  continual  insist- 
ance  upon  their  natural  Franchise,  and  also,  if  you  take 
the  least  pains  in  analysis  of  their  literature  down  to 
this  day,  that  the  idea  of  falseness  is  to  them  indeed 
more  hateful  than  to  any  other  European  nation.  To 
take  a  quite  cardinal  instance.  If  you  compare  Lucian's 
and  Shakespeare's  Timon  with  Moliere'g  Alceste,  you 
will  find  the  Greek  and  English  misanthropes  dwell 
only  on  men's  ingratitude  to  themselves,  but  Alceste, 
on  their  falsehood  to  each  other. 

Now  hear  M.  le  Due  farther : 

"The  castles  built  between  the  tenth  and  twelfth 
centuries  along  the  Loire,  Gironde,  and  Seine,  that  is 
to  say,  along  the  lines  of  the  Norman  invasions,  and 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  their  possessions,  have  a 
peculiar  and  uniform  character  which  one  finds  neither 

*  Article  "  Chateau,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  65. 


Alfred  to   Canir  dc  Lion.  77 

in  central  France,  nor  in  Burgundy,  nor  can  there  be 
any  need  for  us  to  throw  light  on  {/aire  ressortir)  the 
superiority  of  the  warrior  spirit  of  the  Normans,  during 
the  later  times  of  the  Carlovingian  epoch,  over  the 
spirit  of  the  chiefs  of  Frank  descent,  established  on 
the  Gallo-Roman  soil."  There's  a  bit  of  honesty  in  a 
Frenchman  for  you  ! 

I  have  just  said  that  they  valued  religion  chiefly  for 
its  influence  of  order  in  the  present  world  :  being  in 
this,  observe,  as  nearly  as  may  be  the  exact  reverse 
of  modern  believers,  or  persons  who  profess  to  be 
such,  —  of  whom  it  may  be  generally  alleged,  too  truly, 
that  they  value  religion  with  respect  to  their  future 
bliss  rather  than  their  present  duty;  and  are  therefore 
continually  careless  of  its  direct  commands,  with  easy 
excuse  to  themselves  for  disobedience  to  them.  Where- 
as the  Norman,  finding  in  his  own  heart  an  irresistible 
impulse  to  action,  and  perceiving  himself  to  be  set, 
with  entirely  strong  body,  brain,  and  will,  in  the  midst 
of  a  weak  and  dissolute  confusion  of  all  things,  takes 
from  the  Bible  instantly  into  his  conscience  every  exhor- 
tation to  Do  and  to  Govern  ;  and  becomes,  with  all 
his  might  and  understanding,  a  blunt  and  rough  ser- 
vant, knccht,  or  knight  of  God,  liable  to  much  misap- 
prehension, of  course,  as  to  the  services  immediately 
required  of  him,  but  supposing,  since  the  whole  make 
of  him,  outside  and  in,  is  a  soldier's,  that  God  meant 
him  for  a  soldier,  and  that  he  is  to  establish,  by  main 


yS  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

force,  the  Christian  faith  and  works  all  over  the  world 
so  far  as  he  comprehends  them  ;  not  merely  with  the 
Mahometan  indignation  against  spiritual  error,  but 
with  a  sound  and  honest  soul's  dislike  of  material  error, 
and  resolution  to  extinguish  tJiat,  even  if  perchance 
found  in  the  spiritual  persons  to  whom,  in  their  office, 
he  yet  rendered  total  reverence. 

Which  force  and  faith  in  him  I  may  best  illustrate 
by  merely  putting  together  the  broken  paragraphs  of 
Sismondi's  account  of  the  founding  of  the  Norman 
Kingdom  of  Sicily :  virtually  contemporary  with  the 
conquest  of  England. 

"  The  Normans  surpassed  all  the  races  of  the  west 
in  their  ardour  for  pilgrimages.  They  would  not,  to 
go  into  the  Holy  Land,  submit  to  the  monotony  *  of  a 
long  sea  voyage  —  the  rather  that  they  found  not  on 
the  Mediterranean  the  storms  or  dangers  they  had 
rejoiced  to  encounter  on  their  own  sea.  They  trav- 
ersed by  land  the  whole  of  France  and  Italy,  trusting 
to  their  swords  to  procure  the  necessary  subsistence,! 
if  the  charity  of  the  faithful  did  not  enough  provide 
for  it  with  alms.  The  towns  of  Naples,  Amalfi,  Gaeta, 
and  Bari,  held  constant  commerce  with  Syria ;  and  fre- 
quent miracles,  it  was  believed,  illustrated  the  Monte 

*  I  give  Sismondi's  idea  as  it  stands,  but  there  was  no  question  in  the  matter 
of  monotony  or  of  danger.  The  journey  was  made  on  foot  because  it  was  the 
most  laborious  way,  and  the  most  humble. 

t  See  farther  on,  p.  no,  the  analogies  with  English  arrangements  of  the 
same  kind. 


Alfred  to   Coeiir  de  Lion.  79 

Cassino,  (St.  Benedict  again  !)  on  the  road  of  Naples, 
and  the  Mount  of  Angels  (Garganus)  above  Bari." 
(Querceta  Gargani — verily,  laborant ;  noiv,  et  orant.) 
"The  pilgrims  wished  to  visit  during  their  journey  the 
monasteries  built  on  these  two  mountains,  and  there- 
fore nearly  always,  either  going  or  returning  to  the 
Holy  Land,  passed  through  Magna  Grascia. 

"  In  one  of  the  earliest  years  of  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, about  forty  of  these  religious  travellers,  having 
returned  from  the  Holy  Land,  chanced  to  have  met 
together  in  Salerno  at  the  moment  when  a  small  Sar- 
acen fleet  came  to  insult  the  town,  and  demand  of  it 
a  military  contribution.  The  inhabitants  of  South 
Italy,  at  this  time,  abandoned  to  the  delights  of  their 
enchanted  climate,  had  lost  nearly  all  military  courage. 
The  Salernitani  saw  with  astonishment  forty  Norman 
knights,  after  having  demanded  horses  and  arms  from 
the  Prince  of  Salerno,  order  the  gates  of  the  town  to 
be  opened,  charge  the  Saracens  fearlessly,  and  put 
them  to  flight.  The  Salernitani  followed,  however,  the 
example  given  them  by  these  brave  warriors,  and  those 
of  the  Mussulmans  who  escaped  their  swords  were 
forced  to  re-embark  in  all  haste. 

"The  Prince  of  Salerno,  Guaimar  HI.,  tried  in  vain 
to  keep  the  warrior-pilgrims  at  his  court  :  but  at  his 
solicitation  other  companies  established  themselves  on 
the  rocks  of  Salerno  and  Amalfi,  until,  on  Christmas 
Day,   1 04 1,  (exactly  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  the 


So  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

coronation  here  at  Westminster  of  the  Conqueror,) 
they  gathered  their  scattered  forces  at  Aversa,*  twelve 
groups  of  them  under  twelve  chosen  counts,  and  all 
under  the  Lombard  Ardoin,  as  commander-in-chief." 
Be  so  good  as  to  note  that,  —  a  marvellous  key-note 
of  historical  fact  about  the  unjesting  Lombards.  I 
cannot  find  the  total  Norman  number :  the  chief  con- 
tingent, under  William  of  the  Iron  Arm,  the  son  of 
Tancred  of  Hauteville,  was  only  of  three  hundred 
knights ;  the  Count  of  Aversa's  troop,  of  the  same 
number,  is  named  as  an  important  part  of  the  little 
army  —  admit  it  for  ten  times  Tancred's,  three  thou- 
sand men  in  all.  At  Aversa,  these  three  .thousand 
men  form,  coolly  on  Christmas  Day,  1041,  the  design 
of — well,  I  told  you  they  didn't  design  much,  only, 
now  we're  here,  we  may  as  well,  while  we're  about  it, 
—  overthrow  the  Greek  empire  !  That  was  their  little 
game! — a  Christmas  mumming  to  purpose.  The  fol- 
lowing year,  the  whole  of  Apulia  was  divided  among 
them. 

I  will  not  spoil,  by  abstracting,  the  magnificent  fol- 
lowing history  of  Robert  Guiscard,  the  most  wonderful 
soldier  of  that  or  any  other  time  :  I  leave  you  to  finish 
it  for  yourselves,  only  asking  you  to  read  together  with 
it,  the  sketch,  in  Turner's  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxons, 
of  Alfred's  long  previous  war  with  the  Norman  Hast- 
ing ;  pointing  out  to  you  for  foci  of  character  in  each 

*  In  Lombardy,  south  of  Pavia. 


Alfred  to    Ccvur  dc  Lion.  8i 

contest,  the  culminatini;  incidents  of  naval  battle.  In 
Guiscard's  struggle  with  the  Greeks,  he  encounters  for 
their  chief  naval  force  the  Venetian  fleet  under  the 
Doge  Domenico  Selvo.  The  Venetians  are  at  this 
moment  undoubted  masters  in  all  naval  warfare  ;  the 
Normans  arc  worsted  easily  the  first  day,  —  the  second 
day,  fighting  harder,  they  are  defeated  again,  and  so 
disastrously  that  the  Venetian  Doge  takes  no  precau- 
tions against  them  on  the  third  day,  thinking  them 
utterly  disabled.  Guiscard  attacks  him  again  on  the 
third  day,  with  the  mere  wreck  of  his  own  ships,  and 
defeats  the  tired  and  amazed  Italians  finally ! 

The  sea-fight  between  Alfred's  ships  and  those  of 
Hasting,  ought  to  be  still  more  memorable  to  us. 
Alfred,  as  I  noticed  in  last  lecture,  had  built  war  ships 
nearly  twice  as  long  as  the  Normans',  swifter,  and 
steadier  on  the  waves.  Six  Norman  ships  were  rav- 
aging the  Isle  of  Wight  ;  Alfred  sent  nine  of  his  own 
to  take  them.  The  King's  fleet  found  the  Northmen's 
embayed,  and  three  of  them  aground.  The  three  others 
engaged  Alfred s  nine,  tieicc  their  siac  ;  two  of  the  Viking 
ships  were  taken,  but  the  third  escaped,  with  only  five 
men  !  A  nation  which  verily  took  its  pleasures  in  its 
Deeds. 

But  before  I  can  illustrate  farther  either  their  deeds 
or  their  religion,  I  must  for  an  instant  meet  the  objec- 
tion which  I  suppose  the  extreme  piobit)-  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  must  feel  acutely  against  these  men,  — 
that  thcv  all   lived   bv  thieving. 


82  The  Pleasures  oj  Deed. 

Without  venturing  to  allude  to  the  raison  d'etre  of 
the  present  French  and  English  Stock  Exchanges,  I 
will  merely  ask  any  of  you  here,  whether  of  Saxon  or 
Norman  blood,  to  define  for  himself  what  he  means  by 
the  "possession  of  India."  I  have  no  doubt  that  you 
all  wish  to  keep  India  in  order,  and  in  like  manner  I 
have  assured  you  that  Duke  William  wished  to  keep 
England  in  order.  If  you  will  read  the  lecture  on  the 
life  of  Sir  Herbert  Edwardes,  which  I  hope  to  give  in 
London  after  finishing  this  course,*  you  will  see  how  a 
Christian  British  officer  can,  and  does,  verily,  and  with 
his  whole  heart,  keep  in  order  such  part  of  India  as 
may  be  entrusted  to  him,  and  in  so  doing,  secure  our 
Empire.  But  the  silent  feeling  and  practice  of  the 
nation  about  India  is  based  on  quite  other  motives  than 
Sir  Herbert's.  Every  mutiny,  every  danger,  every  ter- 
ror, and  every  crime,  occurring  under,  or  paralyzing, 
our  Indian  legislation,  arises  directly  out  of  our  na- 
tional desire  to  live  on  the  loot  of  India,  and  the  notion 
always  entertained  by  English  young  gentlemen  and 
ladies  of  good  position,  falling  in  love  with  each  other 
without  immediate  prospect  of  establishment  in  Bel- 
grave  Square,  that  they  can  find  in  India,  instantly  on 
landing,  a  bungalow  ready  furnished  with  the  loveliest 
fans,   china,   and    shawls,  —  ices    and    sherbet   at    com- 

*  This  was  prevented  by  the  necessity  for  the  re-arrangement  of  my  terminal 
Oxford  lectures:  I  am  now  preparing  that  on  Sir  Herbert  for  publication  in  a 
•omewhat  expanded  form. 


Alfred  to    Co'ur  dc  Lion.  83 

mand, — four-and-twenty  slaves  succeeding  each  other 
hourly  to  swing  the  punkah,  and  a  regiment  with  a 
beautiful  band  to  "keep  order"  outside,  all  round  the 
house. 

Entreating  your  pardon  for  what  may  seem  rude  in 
these  personal  remarks,  I  will  further  entreat  you  to 
read  my  account  of  the  death  of  Coeur  de  Lion  in  the 
third  number  of  '  Fors  Clavigera' — and  also  the  scenes 
in  '  Ivanhoe '  between  CcKur  dc  Lion  and  Locksley ; 
and  commending  these  few  passages  to  your  quiet 
consideration,  I  proceed  to  give  you  another  anecdote 
or  two  of  the  Normans  in  Italy,  twelve  years  later  than 
those  given  above,  and,  therefore,  only  thirteen  years 
before  the  battle  of  Hastings. 

Their  divisit)n  of  South  Italy  among  them  especially, 
and  their  defeat  of  Venice,  had  alarmed  everybody 
considerably, — especially  the  Tope,  Leo  IX.,  who  did 
not  understand  this  manifestation  of  their  piety,  lie 
sent  to  Henry  III.  of  German)-,  to  whom  he  (jwed  his 
Popedom,  for  some  German  knights,  and  got  rt\-e  hun- 
dred spears  ;  gathered  out  of  all  Apulia,  Campania,  and 
the  March  of  Ancona,  what  Greek  and  Latin  troo[)s 
were  to  be  had,  to  jijin  his  own  army  of  tlie  i)atrimon\' 
of  St.  Peter;  and  the  holy  Pontilf,  with  this  numerous 
army,  but  no  general,  began  the  campaign  by  a  \<\\- 
grimage  with  all  his  troops  to  Monte  Cassino,  in  order 
to  obtain,  if  it  might  be,  St.  Benedict  for  general. 

Against  the   Pope's  collected   masses,  with  St.  Bene- 


84  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

diet,  their  eontemplative  but  at  first  inactive  general, 
stood  the  little  army  of  Normans,  — certainly  not  more 
than  the  third  of  their  number  —  but  with  Robert 
Guiscard  for  captain,  and  under  him  his  brother, 
Humphrey  of  Hauteville,  and  Richard  of  Aversa.  Not 
in  fear,  but  in  devotion,  they  prayed  the  Pope  *avec 
instance,'  —  to  say  on  what  conditions  they  could  ap- 
pease his  anger,  and  live  in  peace  under  him.  But 
the  Pope  would  hear  of  nothing  but  their  evacuation 
of  Italy.  Whereupon,  they  had  to  settle  the  question 
in  the  Norman  manner. 

The  two  armies  met  in  front  of  Civitella,  on  Water- 
loo day,  1 8th  June,  thirteen  years,  as  I  said,  before  the 
battle  of  Hastings.  The  German  knights  were  the 
heart  of  the  Pope's  army,  but  they  were  only  five  hun- 
dred ;  the  Normans  surrounded  them  first,  and  slew 
them,  nearly  to  a  man — and  then  made  extremely 
short  work  with  the  Italians  and  Greeks.  The  Pope, 
with  the  wreck  of  them,  fled  into  Civitella ;  but  the 
townspeople  dared  not  defend  their  walls,  and  thrust 
the  Pope  himself  out  of  their  gates  —  to  meet,  alone, 
the  Norman  army. 

He  met  it,  not  alone,  St.  Benedict  being  with  him 
now,  when  he  had  no  longer  the  strength  of  man  to 
trust  in. 

The  Normans,  as  they  approached  him,  threw  them- 
selves on  their  knees,  —  covered  themselves  with  dust, 
and  implored  his  pardon  and  his  blessing. 


Alfred  to   Coeur  de  Lion.  85 

There's  a  bit  of  poetry  —  if  you  like, — but  a  piece 
of  steel-clad  fact  also,  compared  to  which  the  battle 
of  Hastings  and  Waterloo  both,  were  mere  boys' 
squabbles. 

You  don't  suppose,  you  British  schoolboys,  that  yoii 
overthrew  Napoleon  — yoii  ?  Your  prime  Minister 
folded  up  the  map  of  Europe  at  the  thought  of  him. 
Not  you,  but  the  snows  of  Heaven,  and  the  hand  of 
Him  who  dasheth  in  pieces  with  a  rod  of  iron.  He 
casteth  forth  His  ice  like  morsels, — who  can  stand 
before  His  cold .-' 

But,  so  far  as  you  have  indeed  the  right  to  trust  in 
the  courage  of  your  own  hearts,  remember  also  —  it  is 
not  in  Norman  nor  Saxon,  but  in  Celtic  race  that  your 
real  strength  lies.  The  battles  both  of  Waterloo  and 
Alma  were  won  by  Irish  and  Scots  —  by  the  terrible 
Scots  Greys,  and  by  Sir  Colin's  Highlanders.  Your 
'thin  red  line,'  was  kept  steady  at  Alma  only  by 
Colonel  Yea's  swearing  at  them. 

But  the  old  Pope,  alone  against  a  Norman  army, 
wanted  nobody  to  swear  at  him.  Steady  enough  he, 
having  somebody  to  bless  him,  instead  of  swear  at  him. 
St.  Benedict,  namely  ;  whose  (memory  shall  \vc  say  T) 
helped  him  now  at  his  pinch  in  a  singular  manner, — 
for  the  Normans,  having  got  the  old  man's  forgiveness, 
vowed  themselves  his  feudal  servants;  and  for  seven 
centuries  afterwards  the  whole  kingdom  of  Na])les  re- 
mained a    fief   of  St.   Peter,  —  won   for   him   thus  by  u 


86  The  Pleasures  of  Deed. 

single  man,  unarmed,  against  three  thousand  Norman 
knights,  captained  by  Robert  Guiscard  ! 

A  day  of  deeds,  gentlemen,  to  some  purpose, — tliat 
1 8th  of  June,  anyhow. 

Here,  in  the  historical  account  of  Norman  character, 
I  must  unwillingly  stop  for  to-day  —  because,  as  you 
choose  to  spend  your  University  money  in  building 
ball-rooms  instead  of  lecture-rooms,  I  dare  not  keep 
you  much  longer  in  this  black  hole,  with  its  nineteenth 
century  ventilation.  I  try  your  patience  —  and  tax 
your  breath  —  only  for  a  few  minutes  more  in  drawing 
the  necessary  corollaries  respecting  Norman  art.* 

How  far  the  existing  British  nation  owes  its  -military 
prowess  to  the  blood  of  Normandy  and  Anjou,  I  have 
never  examined  its  genealogy  enough  to  tell  you  ;  — 
but  this  I  can  tell  you  positively,  that  whatever  consti- 
tutional order  or  personal  valour  the  Normans  enforced 
or  taught  among  the  nations  they  conquered,  they  did 
not  at  first  attempt  with  their  own  hands  to  rival  them 
in  any  of  their  finer  arts,  but  used  both  Greek  and 
Saxon  sculptors,  either  as  slaves,  or  hired  workmen, 
and  more  or  less  therefore  chilled  and  degraded  the 
hearts  of  the  men  thus  set  to  servile,  or  at  best,  hire- 
ling, labour. 

*  Given  at  niucli  greater  length  in  the  lecture,  with  diagrams  from  Iffley 
and  Foictiers,  without  which  the  text  of  them  would  be  unintelligible.  The 
sum  of  what  I  said  was  a  strong  assertion  of  the  incapacity  of  the  Nor- 
mans for  any  but  the  rudest  and  most  grotesque  sculpture,  —  Foictiers  being,  on 
the  contrary,  examined  and  praised  as  (lallic  Frencli  —  not   Norman. 


Alfred  to    Cceur  de  Lion.  87 

In  1874,  I  went  to  see  Etna,  Scylla,  Charybdis,  and 
the  tombs  of  the  Norman  Kings  at  Palermo  ;  surprised, 
as  you  may  imagine,  to  find  that  there  wasn't  a  stroke 
nor  a  notion  of  Norman  work  in  them.  They  are, 
every  atom,  done  by  Greeks,  and  are  as  pure  Greek  as 
the  temple  of  yEgina ;  but  more  rich  and  refined.  I 
drew  with  accurate  care,  and  with  measured  profile  of 
every  moulding,  the  tomb  built  for  Roger  II.  (after- 
wards Frederick  II.  was  laid  in  its  dark  porphyry). 
And  it  is  a  perfect  type  of  the  Greek-Christian  form 
of  tomb  —  temple  over  sarcophagus,  in  which  the  ped- 
iments rise  gradually,  as  time  goes  on,  into  acute 
angles  —  get  pierced  in  the  gable  with  foils,  and  their 
sculptures  thrown  outside  on  their  flanks,  and  become 
at  last  in  the  fourteenth  century,  the  tombs  of  Verona. 
But  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  Normans  employing 
these  Greek  slaves  for  their  work  in  Sicily  (within 
thirty  miles  of  the  field  of  Himera)  ?  Well,  the  main 
meaning  is  that  though  the  Normans  could  build,  they 
couldn't  carve,  and  were  wmsc  enough  not  to  try  to, 
when  they  couldn't,  as  you  do  now  all  over  this  in- 
tensely comic  and  tragic  town  :  but,  here  in  ICngland, 
they  only  employed  the  Sa.xon  with  a  grudge,  and 
therefore  being  more  and  more  driven  to  use  barren 
mouldings  without  sculpture,  gradually  developed  the 
structural  forms  of  archivolt,  which  breaking  into  the 
lancet,  brighten  and  balance  themselves  into  the  sym- 
metry of  early   English   Gt)thic. 


88  The  Pleasures  of  Deed, 

But  even  for  the  first  decoration  of  the  archivolt 
itself,  they  were  probably  indebted  to  the  Greeks  in 
a  degree  I  never  apprehended,  until  by  pure  happy 
chance,  a  friend  gave  me  the  clue  to  it  just  as  I  was 
writing  the  last  pages  of  this  lecture. 

In  the  generalization  of  ornament  attempted  in  the 
first  volume  of  the  '  Stones  of  Venice,'  I  supposed  the 
Norman  zigzag  (and  with  some  practical  truth)  to  be 
derived  from  the  angular  notches  with  which  the  blow 
of  an  axe  can  most  easily  decorate,  or  at  least  vary, 
the  solid  edge  of  a  square  fillet.  My  good  friend,  and 
supporter,  and  for  some  time  back  the  single  trustee 
of  St.  George's  Guild,  Mr.  George  Baker,  having  come 
to  Oxford  on  Guild  business,  I  happened  to  show  him 
the  photographs  of  the  front  of  Iffley  church,  which 
had  been  collected  for  this  lecture  ;  and  immediately 
afterwards,  in  taking  him  through  the  schools,  stopped 
to  show  him  the  Athena  of  yEgina  as  one  of  the  most 
important  of  the  Greek  examples  lately  obtained  for  us 
by  Professor  Richmond.  The  statue  is  (rightly)  so 
placed  that  in  looking  up  to  it,  the  plait  of  hair  across 
the  forehead  is  seen  in  a  steeply  curved  arch.  "Why," 
says  Mr.  Baker,  pointing  to  it,  "there's  the  Norman 
arch  of  Iffley."  Sure  enough,  there  it  exactly  was  : 
and  a  moment's  reflection  showed  me  how  easily,  and 
with  what  instinctive  fitness,  the  Norman  builders, 
looking  to  the  Greeks  as  their  absolute  masters  in 
sculpture,  and   recognizing  also,  during    the  Crusades, 


Alfred  to   Cceur  de  Lion.  89 

the  hieroglyphic  use  of  the  zigzag,  for  water,  by  the 
Egyptians,  might  have  adopted  this  easily  attained 
decoration  at  once  as  the  sign  of  the  element  over 
which  they  reigned,  and  of  the  power  of  the  Greek 
goddess  who  ruled  both  it  and  them. 

I  do  not  in  the  least  press  your  acceptance  of  such 
a  tradition,  nor  for  the  rest,  do  I  care  myself  whence 
any  method  of  ornament  is  derived,  if  only,  as  a  stran- 
ger, you  bid  it  reverent  welcome.  But  much  proba- 
bility is  added  to  the  conjecture  by  the  indisputable 
transition  of  the  Greek  ^^g  and  arrow  moulding  into 
the  floral  cornices  of  Saxon  and  other  twelfth  century 
cathedrals  in  Central  France.  These  and  other  such 
transitions  and  exaltations  I  will  give  you  the  materials 
to  study  at  your  leisure,  after  illustrating  in  my  next 
lecture  the  forces  of  religious  imagination  by  which  all 
that  was  most  beautiful  in  them  was  inspired. 


LECTURE   IV. 

{Nov.  8,  1884.) 


THE    PLEASURES  OF   FANCY. 

Cceur  de  Lion  to  Eli{abeth 
(1189  to  1558). 


LECTURE    IV. 
THE   PLEASURES   OF   FANCY. 


CCEUR   DE   LION   TO   ELIZABETH. 

IN  using  the  word  "  Fancy,"  for  the  mental  faculties 
of  which  I  am  to  speak  to-day,  I  trust  you,  at  your 
leisure,  to  read  the  Introductory  Note  to  the  second 
volume  of  '  Modern  Painters'  in  the  small  new  edition, 
which  gives  sufificient  reason  for  practically  including 
under  the  single  term  Fancy,  or  Fantasy,  all  the  ener- 
gies of  the  Imagination, — in  the  terms  of  the  last  sen- 
tence of  that  preface,—"  the  healthy,  voluntary,  and 
necessary,*  action  of  the  highest  powers  of  the  human 
mind,  on  subjects  properly  demanding  and  justifying 
their  exertion." 

I  must  farther  ask  you  to  read,  in  the  same  volume, 
the  close  of  the  chapter  *  Of  Imagination  Penetrative,* 
pp.  120  to  130,  of  which  the  gist,  which  I  must  give  as 
the  first  principle  from  which  we  start  in  our  to-day's 
inquiry,  is  that  "  Imagination,  rightly  so  called,  has  no 

♦  Meaninp  that  all  healthy  minds  possess  imagination,  and  use  it  at  will,  undet 
fixed  laws  of  truthful  perception  and  memory. 


94  The  PIeas2(7rs  of  Fancy. 

food,  no  delight,  no  care,  no  perception,  except  of 
truth  ;  it  is  for  ever  looking  under  masks,  and  burning 
up  mists ;  no  fairness  of  form,  no  majesty  of  seeming, 
will  satisfy  it ;  the  first  condition  of  its  existence  is 
incapability  of  being  deceived."*  In  that  sentence, 
which  is  a  part,  and  a  very  valuable  part,  of  the  origi- 
nal book,  I  still  adopted  and  used  unnecesspriiy  the 
ordinary  distinction  between  Fancy  and  Imagirxatior — ■ 
Fancy  concerned  with  lighter  things,  creating  fafnes  or 
centaurs,  and  Imagination  creating  men;  and  I  uas  <n 
the  habit  always  of  implying  by  the  meaner  wo/d 
Fancy,  a  voluntary  Fallacy,  as  Wordsworth  does  \,\ 
those  lines  to  his  -wife,  making  of  her  a  mere  lay  ^^-»\< 
for  the  drapery  of  his  fancy — 

Such  if  thou  wert,  in  all  men's  view 

An  universal  show, 
What  would  my  Fancy  have  to  do, 

My  feelings  to  bestow. 

But  you  will  at  once  understand  the  higher  and  more 
universal  power  which  I  now  wish  you  to  understand 
by  the  Fancy,  including  all  imaginative  energy,  correct- 
ing these  lines  of  Wordsworth's  to  a  more  worthy 
description  of  a  true  lover's  happiness.  When  a  boy 
falls  in  love  with  a  girl,  you  say  he  has  taken  a  fancy 
for  her;  but  if  he  love  her  rightly,  that  is  to  say  for 
her  noble  qualities,  you  ought  to  say  he  has  taTcen  an 
imagination  for  her;    for   then  he  is  endued  with  the 

*  Vide  pp.  124-5. 


C(Eur  de  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  95 

new  light  of  love  which  sees  and  tells  of  the  mind  in 
her, — and  this  neither  falsely  nor  vainly.  His  love 
does  not  bestow,  it  discovers,  what  is  indeed  most 
precious  in  his  mistress,  and  most  needful  for  his  own 
life  and  happiness.  Day  by  day,  as  he  loves  her  bet- 
ter, he  discerns  her  more  truly  ;  and  it  is  only  the  truth 
of  his  love  that  does  so.  Falsehood  to  her,  would  at 
once  disenchant  and  blind  him. 

In  my  first  lecture  of  this  year,  I  pointed  out  to  you 
with  what  extreme  simplicity  and  reality  the  Chris- 
tian faith  must  have  presented  itself  to  the  Northern 
Pagan's  mind,  in  its  distinction  from  his  former  con- 
fused and  monstrous  mythology.  It  was  also  in  that 
simplicity  and  tangible  reality  of  conception,  that  this 
Faith  became  to  them,  and  to  the  other  savage  nations 
of  Europe,  Tutrcss  of  the  real  power  of  their  imagina- 
tion ;  and  it  became  so,  only  in  so  far  as  it  indeed  con- 
veyed to  them  statements  which,  however  in  some  re- 
spects mysterious,  were  yet  most  literally  and  brightly 
true,  as  compared  with  their  former  conceptions.  So 
that  while  the  blind  cunning  of  the  savage  had  pro- 
duced only  misshapen  logs  or  scrawls;  the  .yr^/;/;^  imagi- 
nation of  the  Christian  painters  created,  for  them  and 
for  all  the  world,  the  perfect  types  of  the  Virgin  and 
of  her  Son  ;  which  became,  indeed.  Divine,  by  being, 
with  the  most  affectionate  truth,  human. 

And  the  association  of  this  truth  in  loving  concep- 
tion, with  the  general  honesty  and  truth  of  the  charac- 


96  The  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

ter,  is  again  conclusively  shown  in  the  feelings  of  the. 
lover  to  his  mistress ;  which  we  recognize  as  first  reach- 
ing their  height  in  the  days  of  chivalry.  The  truth 
and  faith  of  the  lover,  and  his  piety  to  Heaven,  are 
the  foundation,  in  his  character,  of  all  the  joy  in  imagi- 
nation which  he  can  receive  from  the  conception  of 
his  lady's — now  no  more  mortal — beauty.  She  is  in- 
deed transfigured  before  him ;  but  the  truth  of  the 
transfiguration  is  greater  than  that  of  the  lightless 
•aspect  she  bears  to  others.  When  therefore,  in  my 
next  lecture,  I  speak  of  the  Pleasures  of  Truth,  as 
distinct  from  those  of  the  Imagination, — if  either  the 
limits  or  clearness  of  brief  title  had  permitted  me,  I 
should  have  said,  imtrans figured  truth  ; — meaning  on 
the  one  side,  truth  which  we  have  not  heart  enough  to 
transfigure,  and  on  the  other,  truth  of  the  lower  kind 
which  is  incapable  of  transfiguration.  One  may  look 
at  a  girl  till  one  believes  she  is  an  angel ;  because,  in 
the  best  of  her,  she  is  one ;  but  one  can't  look  at  a 
cockchafer  till  one  believes  it  is  a  girl. 

With  this  warning  of  the  connection  which  exists 
between  the  honest  intellect  and  the  healthy  imagi- 
nation ;  and  using  henceforward  the  shorter  word 
*  Fancy'  for  all  inventive  vision,  I  proceed  to  consider 
with  you  the  meaning  and  consequences  of  the  frank 
and  eager  exertion  of  the  fancy  on  Religious  subjects, 
between  the  twelfth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

Its  first,  and  admittedly  most    questionable  action, 


Cceitr  dc  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  97 

the  promotion  of  the  group  of  martyr  saints  of  the 
third  century  to  thrones  of  uncontested  dominion  in 
heaven,  had  better  be  distinctly  understood,  before  we 
debate  of  it,  either  with  the  Iconoclast  or  the  Ration- 
alist. This  apotheosis  by  the  Imagination  is  the  sub- 
ject of  my  present  lecture.  To-day  I  only  describe  it, 
— in  my  next  lecture  I   will  discuss  it. 

Observe,  however,  that  in  giving  such  a  history  of 
the  mental  constitution  of  nascent  Christianity,  we 
have  to  deal  with,  and  carefully  to  distinguish,  two 
entirely  different  orders  in  its  accepted  hierarchy  : — 
one,  scarcely  founded  at  all  on  personal  characters  or 
acts,  but  mythic  or  symbolic  ;  often  merely  the  revi- 
val, the  baptized  resuscitation  of  a  Pagan  deity,  or  the 
personified  omnipresence  of  a  Christian  virtue ; — the 
other,  a  senate  of  Patres  Conscripti  of  real  persons, 
great  in  genius,  and  perfect,  humanly  speaking,  in  holi- 
ness;  who  by  their  personal  force  and  inspired  wis- 
dom, wrought  the  plastic  body  of  the  Church  into  such 
noble  form  as  in  each  of  their  epochs  it  was  able  to 
receive  ;  and  rn  the  right  understanding  of  whose 
lives,  nor  \o  s  of  the  affectionate  traditions  which  mag- 
nified and  illumined  their  memories,  must  absolutely 
depend  the  value  of  every  estimate  we  form,  whether 
of  the  nature  of  the  Christian  Church  herself,  or  of  the 
directness  of  spiritual  agency  by  which  she  was  guided.* 

*  If  the  reader  believes  in  no  spiritual  agency,  still  his  understanding  of  the 
first  letters  in  the  Alphabet  of  History  depends  on  his  tonipnhcnding  rightiv 
the  tempers  of  the    people   who   did- 


98  The  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

An  important  distinction,  therefore,  is  to  be  noted 
at  the  outset,  in  the  objects  of  this  Apotheosis,  accord- 
ing as  they  are,  or  are  not,  real  persons. 

Of  these  two  great  orders  of  Saints,  the  first,  or 
mythic,  belongs — speaking  broadly — to  the  southern  or 
Greek  Church   alone. 

The  Gothic  Christians,  once  detached  from  the  wor- 
ship of  Odin  and  Thor,  abjure  from  their  hearts  all 
trust  in  the  elements,  and  all  worship  of  ideas.  They 
will  have  their  Saints  in  flesh  and  blood,  their  Angels 
in  plume  and  armour ;  and  nothing  incorporeal  or 
invisible.  In  all  the  Religious  sculpture  beside  Loire 
and  Seine,  you  will  not  find  either  of  the  great  rivers 
personified  ;  the  dress  of  the  highest  seraph  is  of  true 
steel  or  sound  broadcloth,  neither  flecked  by  hail,  nor 
fringed  by  thunder ;  and  while  the  ideal  Charity  of 
Giotto  at  Padua  presents  her  heart  in  her  hand  to  God, 
and  tramples  at  the  same  instant  on  bags  of  gold,  the 
treasures  of  the  world,  and  gives  only  corn  and  flow- 
ers ;  that  on  the  west  porch  of  Amiens  is  content  to 
clothe  a  beggar  with  a  piece  of  the  staple  manufacture 
of  the  town. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  nearly  impossible  to  find  in  the 
imagery  of  the  Greek  Church,  under  the  former  exer- 
cise of  the  Imagination,  a  representation  either  of  man 
or  beast  which  purports  to  represent  only  the  person, 
or  the  brute.  Every  mortal  creature  stands  for  an  Im- 
mortal  Intelligence  or  Influence :    a  Lamb  means   an 


Cociir  dc  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  99 

Apostle,  a  Lion  an  Evangelist,  an  Angel  the  Eternal 
justice  or  benevolence ;  and  the  most  historical  and 
indubitable  of  Saints  are  compelled  to  set  forth,  in 
their  vulgarly  apparent  persons,  a  Platonic  myth  or  an 
Athanasian  article. 

I  therefore  take  note  first  of  the  mythic  saints  in 
succession,  whom  this  treatment  of  them  by  the 
Byzantine  Church  made  afterwards  the  favourite  idols 
of  all  Christendom. 

I.  The  most  mythic  is  of  course  St.  Sophia  ;  the 
shade  of  the  Greek  Athena,  passing  into  the  '  Wisdom  ' 
of  the  Jewish  Proverbs  and  Psalms,  and  the  Apocry- 
phal '  Wisdom  of  Solomon.'  She  always  remains 
understood  as  a  personification  only ;  and  has  no  direct 
influence  on  the  mind  of  the  unlearned  multitude  of 
Western  Christendom,  except  as  a  godmother, — in 
which  kindly  function  she  is  more  and  more  accepted 
as  times  go  on  ;  her  health)'  influence  being  perhaps 
greater  over  sweet  vicars'  daughters  in  Wakefield — 
when  Wakefield  %vas, — than  over  the  prudentest  of  the 
rarely  prudent   Empresses   of  Byzantium. 

II.  Of  St.  Catharine  of  Egypt  there  are  vestiges  of 
personal  tradition  which  may  perhaps  permit  the  sup- 
position of  her  having  really  once  existed,  as  a  very 
lovely,  witt}%  proud,  and  '  fanciful  '  girl.  She  after- 
wards becomes  the  Christian  type  of  the  Bridi-,  in  the 
'Song  of  Solomon,'  involved  with  an  ideal  of  all  that  is 


lOO  The  Plcasii7'es  of  Fancy. 

purest  in  the  life  of  a  nun,  and  brightest  in  the  death 
of  a  martyr.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  overrate  the  in- 
fluence of  the  conceptions  formed  of  her,  in  ennobling 
the  sentiments  of  Christian  women  of  the  higher 
orders  ; — to  their  practical  common  sense,  as  the  mis- 
tresses of  a  household  or  a  nation,  her  example  may 
have  been  less  conducive. 

III.  St.  Barbara,  also  an  Egyptian,  and  St.  Catha- 
rine's contemporary,  though  the  most  practical  of  the 
mythic  saints,  is  also,  after  St.  Sophia,  the  least  cor- 
poreal :  she  vanishes  far  away  into  the  '  Inclusa  Danae,' 
and  her  "  Turris  aenea"  becomes  a  myth  of  Christian 
safety,  of  which  the  Scriptural  significance  may  be 
enough  felt  by  merely  looking  out  the  texts  under  the 
word  "  Tower,"  in  your  concordance;  and  whose  effect- 
ual power,  in  the  fortitudes  alike  of  matter  and  spirit, 
was  in  all  probability  made  impressive  enough  to  all 
Christendom,  both  by  the  fortifications  and  persecu- 
tions of  Diocletian.  I  have  endeavoured  to  mark  her 
general  relations  to  St.  Sophia  in  the  little  imaginary 
dialogue  between  them,  given  in  the  eighth  lecture  of 
the  '  Ethics  of  the  Dust.' 

Afterwards,  as  Gothic  architecture  becomes  dom- 
inant, and  at  last  beyond  question  the  most  wonder- 
ful of  all  temple-building,  St.  Barbara's  Tower  is,  of 
course,  its  perfected  symbol  and  utmost  achievement; 
and  whether  in  the  coronets  of  countless  battlements 
worn  on  the  brows  of  the  noblest  cities,  or  in  the  Lom- 


C(£iir  dc  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  loi 

bard  bell  tower  on  the  mountains,  and  the  English 
spire  on  Sarum  plain,  the  geometric  majesty  of  the 
Egyptian  maid  became  glorious  in  harmony  of 
defence,  and  sacred  with  precision  of  symbol. 

As  the  buildings  which  showed  her  utmost  skill  were 
chiefly  exposed  to  lightning,  she  is  invoked  in  defence 
from  it;  and  our  i)etition  in  the  Litany,  against  sudden 
death,  was  written  originally  to  her.  The  blasphemous 
corruptions  of  her  into  a  patroness  of  cannon  and  gun- 
powder, are  among  the  most  ludicrous,  (because  precisely 
contrary  to  the  original  tradition,)  as  well  as  the  most 
deadly,  insolences  and  stupidities  of  Renaissance  Art. 

IV.  St.  Margaret  of  Antioch  was  a  shepherdess; 
the  St.  Genevieve  of  the  East  ;  the  type  of  feminine 
gentleness  and  simplicity.  Traditions  of  the  resur- 
rection of  Alcestis  perhaps  mingle  in  those  of  her 
contest  with  the  dragon  ;  but  at  all  events,  she  differs 
from  the  other  three  great  mythic  saints,  in  express- 
ing the  soul's  victory  over  temptation  or  affliction, 
by  Christ's  miraculous  help,  and  without  any  special 
power  of  its  own.  She  is  the  saint  of  the  meek  and 
of  the  poor ;  her  virtue  and  her  victory  are  those  of 
all  gracious  and  lowly  womanhood  ;  and  her  memory 
is  consecrated  among  the  gentle  households  of  Europe; 
no  other  name,  except  those  of  Jeanne  and  Jcanie, 
seems  so  gifted  with  a  baptismal  fairy  power  of  giving 
grace  and  peace. 

I  must  be  forgiven   for  thinking,  even  on  this  canon- 


I02  TJie  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

ical  ground,  not  only  of  Jcanie  Deans,  and  Margaret 
of  Branksome ;  but  of  Meg — Merrilies.  My  readers 
will,  I  fear,  choose  rather  to  think  of  the  more  doubt- 
ful victory  over  the  Dragon,  won  by  the  great  Marga- 
ret of  German  literature. 

V.  With  much  more  clearness  and  historic  comfort 
we  may  approach  the  shrine  of  St.  Cecilia  ;  and  even 
on  the  most  prosaic  and  realistic  minds — such  as  my 
own — a  visit  to  her  house  in  Rome  has  a  comforting 
and  establishing  effect,  which  reminds  one  of  the 
carter  in  *  Harry  and  Lucy,'  who  is  convinced  of  the 
truth  of  a  plaustral  catastrophe  at  first  incredible  to 
him,  as  soon  as  he  hears  the  name  of  the  hill  on  which 
it  Happened.  The  ruling  conception  of  her  is  deep- 
ened gradually  by  the  enlarged  study  of  Religious 
music ;  and  is  at  its  best  and  highest  in  the  thir- 
teenth century,  when  she  rather  resists  than  complies 
with  the  already  tempting  and  distracting  powers  of 
sound;  and  we  are  told  that  '*  cantantibus  organis, 
Cecilia  virgo  in  corde  suo  soli  Domino  decantabat, 
dicens,  '  Fiat,  Domine,  cor  meum  et  corpus  meum 
immaculatum,  ut  non  confundar.'  " 

("While  the  instruments  played,  Cecilia  the  virgin 
sang  in  her  heart  only  to  the  Lord,  saying.  Oh  Lord, 
be  my  heart  and  body  made  stainless,  that  I  be  not 
confounded.") 

This  sentence  occurs  in  my  great  Service-book  of 
the    convent    of    Beau-pr6,    written    in    1290,  and  it  ia 


Coeur  dc  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  103 

illustrated  with  a  miniature  of  Cecilia  sitting  silent  at 
a  banquet,  where  all  manner  of  musicians  are  playing. 
I  need  not  point  out  to  you  how  the  law,  not  of 
sacred  music  only,  so  called,  but  of  all  music,  is  deter- 
mined by  this  sentence ;  which  means  in  effect  that 
unless  music  exalt  and  purify,  it  is  not  under  St.  Ce- 
cilia's ordinance,  and  it  is  not,  virtually,  music  at  all. 
Her  confessed  power  at  last  expires  amidst  a  hub- 
bub of  odes  and  sonatas;  and  I  suppose  her  presence 
at  a  Morning  Popular  is  as  little  anticipated  as  desired. 
Unconfessed,  she  is  of  all  the  mythic  saints  for  ever 
the  greatest;  and  the  child  in  its  nurse's  arms,  and 
every  tender  and  gentle  spirit  which  resolves  to  purify 
in  itself. — as  the  eye  for  seeing,  so  the  ear  for  hearing, 
— may  still,  whether  behind  the  Temple  veil,*  or  at 
the  fireside,  and  by  the  wayside,  hear  Cecilia  sing. 

*  "  But,  standing  in  the  lowest  place, 

And  minfjled  with  the  work-day  crowd, 
A  poor  man  looks,  with  lifted  face, 
And  hears  the  Angels  cry  aloud. 

"  He  seeks  not  how  each  instant  flies, 
One  moment  is  Eternity  ; 
His  spirit  with  the  Angels  cries 
To  Thee,  to  Thcc,  continually. 

"  What  if,  Isaiah  like,  he  know 
His  heart  be  weak,  his  lips  unclean. 
His  nature  vile,  his  office  low, 
His  dwelling  and  his  people  mean? 

"  To  such  the  Angels  spake  of  old— 
To  such  of  yore,  the  glory  came  ; 
These  altar  fires  can  ne'er  grow  cold  : 
Then  be  it  his,  that  cleansing  flame." 

These  verses,  part  of  a  very   lovely  poem,   "  To  Thcc   all   An^'ols  crv  .niouu/ 


I04  The  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

It  would  delay  me  too  long  just  now  to  trace  in 
specialty  farther  the  functions  of  the  mythic,  or,  as  in 
another  sense  they  may  be  truly  called,  the  universal, 
Saints:  the  next  greatest  of  them,  St.  Ursula,  is  essen- 
tially British, — and  you  will  find  enough  about  her  in 
*  Fors  Clavigera '  ;  the  others,  I  will  simply  give  you  in 
entirely  authoritative  order  from  the  St.  Louis'  Psalter, 
as  he  read  and  thought  of  them. 

The  proper  Service-book  of  the  thirteenth  century 
consists  first  of  the  pure  Psalter  ;  then  of  certain  essen- 
tial passages  of  the  Old  Testament — invariably  the 
Song  of  Miriam  at  the  Red  Sea  and  the  last  song  of 
Moses; — ordinarily  also  the  I2th  of  Isaiah  and  the 
prayer  of  Habakkuk  ;  while  St.  Louis'  Psalter  has  also 
the  prayer  of  Hannah,  and  that  of  Hezekiah  (Isaiah 
xxxviii.  lo — 20)  ;  the  Song  of  the  Three  Children  ;  the 
the  Benedictus,  the  Magnificat,  and  the  Nunc  Dimittis. 
Then  follows  the  Athanasian  Creed  ;  and  then,  as  in 
all  Psalters  after  their  chosen  Scripture  passages,  the 
collects  to  the  Virgin,  the  Te  Deum,  and  Service  to 
Christ,  beginning  with  the  Psalm  'The  Lord  reigneth ' ; 
and  then  the  collects  to  the  greater  individual  saints, 
closing  with  the  Litany,  or  constant  prayer  for  mercy 
to  Christ,  and  all  saints ;  of  whom  the  order  is, — Arch- 
angels, Patriarchs,  Apostles,  Disciples,  Innocents,  Mar- 
in the  'Monthly  Packet'  for  September  1873,  are  only  signed  'Veritas.'  The 
volume  for  that  year  (the  i6th)  is  well  worth  getting,  for  the  sake  of  the  admira- 
ble papers  in  it  by  Miss  Sewell,  on  questions  of  the  day  ;  by  Miss  A.  C.  Owen, 
on  Christian  Art ;  and  the  unsigned  Cameos  from  English  History. 


Cociir  de  Lioji  to  Elizabeth.  105 

tyrs,  Confessors,  Monks,  and  Virgins.  Of  women  the 
Magdalen  always  leads ;  St.  Mary  of  Egypt  usually 
follows,  but  may  be  the  last.  Then  the  order  varies  in 
every  place,  and  prayer-book,  no  recognizable  suprem- 
acy being  traceable  ;  except  in  relation  to  the  place, 
or  person,  for  whom  the  book  was  written.  In  St. 
Louis',  St.  Genevieve  (the  last  saint  to  whom  he 
prayed  on  his  death-bed)  follows  the  two  Maries  ;  then 
come — memorable  for  you  best,  as  easiest,  in  this  six- 
foil group, — Saints  Catharine,  Margaret,  and  Scolas- 
tica,  Agatha,  Cecilia,  and  Agnes  ;  and  then  ten  more, 
whom  you  may  learn  or  not  as  you  like  :  I  note  them 
now  only  for  future  reference, — more  lively  and  easy 
for  your  learning, — by  their  French  names, 

Felicite, 
Colombe, 

Christine, 


Aur^c,  Ilonorine, 


Radegonde, 

Prax^de, 

Euph^mie, 


Bathilde,  Eugenie. 

Such   was    the    system   of  Theology   into   which  the 
Imaginative    Religion   of   Europe    was  crystallized,   by 


io6  TJie  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

the  growth  of  its  own  best  faculties,  and  the  influence 
of  all  accessible  and  credible  authorities,  during  the 
period  between  the  eleventh  and  fifteenth  centuries 
inclusive.  Its  spiritual  power  is  completely  repre- 
sented by  the  angelic  and  apostolic  dynasties,  and  the 
women-saints  in  Paradise  ;  for  of  the  men-saints,  be- 
neath the  apostles  and  prophets,  none  but  St.  Christo- 
pher, St.  Nicholas,  St.  Anthony,  St.  James,  and  St. 
George,  attained  anything  like  the  influence  of  Catha- 
rine or  Cecilia  ;  for  the  very  curious  reason,  that  the" 
men-saints  were  much  more  true,  real,  and  numerousi 
St.  Martin  was  reverenced  all  over  Europe,  but  defi- 
nitely, as  a  man,  and  the  Bishop  of  Tours.  So  St. 
Ambrose  at  Milan,  and  St.  Gregory  at  Rome,  and  hun- 
dreds of  good  men  more,  all  over  the  world  ;  while  the 
really  good  women  remained,  though  not  rare,  incon- 
spicuous. The  virtues  of  French  Clotilde,  and  Swiss 
Berthe,  were  painfully  borne  down  in  the  balance  of 
visible  judgment,  by  the  guilt  of  the  Gonerils,  Regans, 
and  Lady  Macbeths,  whose  spectral  procession  closes 
only  with  the  figure  of  Eleanor  in  Woodstock  maze  ; 
and  in  dearth  of  nearer  objects,  the  daily  brighter 
powers  of  fancy  dwelt  with  more  concentrated  devo- 
tion on  the  stainless  ideals  of  the  earlier  maid-martyrs. 
And  observe,  even  the  loftier  fame  of  the  men-saints 
above  named,  as  compared  with  the  rest,  depends  on 
precisely  the  same  character  of  indefinite  personality ; 
and  on  the  representation,  by  each  of  them,  of  a  moral 


Ccettr  dc  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  107 

idea  which  may  be  embodied  and  painted  in  a  miracu- 
lous legend  ;  credible,  as  history,  even  then,  only  to  the 
vulgar;  but  powerful  over  them,  nevertheless,  exactly 
in  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  it  can  be  pic- 
tured and  fancied  as  a  living  creature.  Consider  even 
yet  in  these  days  of  mechanism,  how  the  dullest  John 
Bull  cannot  with  perfect  complacency  adore  himself, 
except  under  the  figure  of  Britannia  or  the  British 
Lion  ;  and  how  the  existence  of  the  popular  jest-book, 
which  might  have  seemed  secure  in  its  necessity  to 
our  weekly  recreation,  is  yet  virtually  centred  on  the 
imaginary  animation  of  a  puppet,  and  the  imaginary 
elevation  to  reason  of  a  dog.  But  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
this  action  of  the  Fancy,  now  distorted  and  despised, 
was  the  happy  and  sacred  tutress  of  every  faculty  of 
the  body  and  soul  ;  and  the  works  and  thoughts 
of  art,  the  joys  and  toils  of  men,  rose  and  flowed  on 
in  the  bright  air  of  it,  with  the  aspiration  of  a  flame, 
and  the  beneficence  of  a  fountain. 

And  now,  in  the  rest  of  my  lecture,  I  had  intended 
to  give  you  a  broad  summary  of  the  rise  and  fall  of 
English  art,  born  under  this  code  of  theology,  and  this 
enthusiasm  of  duty; — of  its  rise,  from  the  rude  vaults 
of  Westminster,  to  the  finished  majesty  of  Wells  ; — 
and  of  its  fall,  from  that  brief  liour  of  llie  thirteenth 
century,  througli  the  wars  of  the  Bolingbroke,  and  the 
pride  of  the  Tudor,  and  the  hist  of  the  Stewart,  to 
expire   under   the   mocking  snarl   and   ruthless  blow  of 


io8  The  Pleasures  of  Fa^tcy. 

the  Puritan.  But  you  know  that  I  have  always,  in 
my  most  serious  work,  allowed  myself  to  be  influenced 
by  those  Chances,  as  they  are  now  called, — but  to  my 
own  feeling  and  belief,  guidances,  and  even,  if  rightly 
understood,  commands, — which,  as  far  as  I  have  read 
history,  the  best  and  sincerest  men  think  providen- 
tial. Had  this  lecture  been  on  common  principles  of 
art,  I  should  have  finished  it  as  I  intended,  without 
fear  of  its  being  the  worse  for  my  consistency.  But  it 
deals,  on  the  contrary,  with  a  subject,  respecting 
which  every  sentence  I  write,  or  speak,  is  of  impor- 
tance in  its  issue  ;  and  I  allowed,  as  you  heard,  the 
momentary  observation  of  a  friend,  to  give  an 
entirely  new  cast  to  the  close  of  my  last"  lecture. 
Much  more,  I  feel  it  incumbent  upon  me  in  this 
one,  to  take  advantage  of  the  most  opportune  help, 
though  in  an  unexpected  direction,  given  me  by  my 
constant  tutor,  Professor  Westwood.  I  went  to  dine 
with  him,  a  day  or  two  ago,  mainly— being  neither  of 
us,  I  am  thankful  to  say,  blue-ribanded — to  drink  his 
health  on  his  recovery  from  his  recent  accident. 
Whereupon  he  gave  me  a  feast  of  good  talk,  old 
wine,  and  purple  manuscripts.  And  having  had  as 
much  of  all  as  I  could  well  carry,  just  as  it  came 
to  the  good-night,  out  he  brings,  for  a  finish,'  this 
leaf  of  manuscript  in  my  hand,  which  he  has  lent 
me  to  show  you, — a  leaf  of  the  Bible  of  Charles  the 
Bald! 


Cceiir  de  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  109 

A  leaf  of  it,  at  least,  as  far  as  you  or  I  could  tell, 
for  Professor  Westwood's  copy  is  just  as  good,  in  all 
the  parts  finished,  as  the  original  :  and,  for  all  prac- 
tical purpose,  I  show  you  here  in  my  hand  a  leaf  of 
the  Bible  which  your  own  King  Alfred  saw  with  his 
own  bright  eyes,  and  from  which  he  learned  his  child- 
faith  in   the  days  of  dawning  thought ! 

There  are  few  English  children  who  do  not  know 
the  story  of  Alfred,  the  king,  letting  the  cakes  burn, 
and  being  chidden  by  his  peasant  hostess.  How  few 
English  children — nay,  how  few  perhaps  of  their 
educated,  not  to  say  learned,  elders — reflect  upon,  if 
even  they  know,  the  far  different  scenes  through  which 
he  had  passed  when  a  child  ! 

Concerning  his  father,  his  mother,  and  his  own 
childhood,  suppose  you  were  to  teach  your  children 
first  these  following  main  facts,  before  you  come  to 
the  toasting  of  the  muffin? 

His  father,  educated  by  Helmstan,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, had  been  offered  the  throne  of  the  great 
Saxon  kingdom  of  Mercia  in  his  early  youth;  had 
refused  it,  and  entered,  as  a  novice  under  St.  Swithin 
the  monastery  at  Winchester.  From  St.  Swithin,  he 
received  the  monastic  habit,  and  was  appointed  by 
Bishop   Helmstan   one  of  his  sulxleacons  ! 

"The    quiet     seclusion     which     Etlielwuli)irs    slow* 

*  Turner,  quotinff  William  of  Malmcsbury,  "  Crassioris  et  hcbelis  inpcnii,"— 
meaning  ihat   he   had   ncillicr   ardour   lor   war,   nor  ambition    for   kint'liood. 


no  The  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

capacity  and  meek  temper  coveted  "  was  not  permitted 
to  him  by  fate.  The  death  of  his  elder  brother  left 
him  the  only  living  representative  of  the  line  of  the 
West  Saxon  princes.  His  accession  to  the  throne 
became  the  desire  of  the  people.  He  obtained  a  dis- 
pensation from  the  Pope  to  leave  the  cloister ; 
assumed  the  crown  of  Egbert  ;  and  retained  Egbert's 
prime  minister,  Alstan,  Bishop  of  Sherborne,  who  was 
the  Minister  in  peace  and  war,  the  Treasurer,  and  the 
Counsellor,  of  the  kings  of  England,  over  a  space,  from 
first  to  last,  of  fifty  years. 

Alfred's  mother,  Osburga,  must  have  been  married 
for  love.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Oslac,  the  king's 
cup-bearer.  Extolled  for  her  piety  and  understand- 
ing, she  bore  the  king  four  sons  ;  dying  before  the 
last,  Alfred,  was  five  years  old,  but  leaving  him  St. 
Swithin  for  his  tutor.  How  little  do  any  of  us  think, 
in  idle  talk  of  rain  or  no  rain  on  St.  Svvithin's  day,  that 
we  speak  of  the  man  whom  Alfred's  father  obeyed 
as  a  monk,  and  whom  his  mother  chose  for  his 
guardian  ! 

Alfred,  both  to  father  and  mother,  was  the  best 
beloved  of  their  children.  On  his  mother's  death,  his 
father  sent  him,  being  then  five  years  old,  with  a  great 
retinue  through  France  and  across  the  Alps  to  Rome; 
and  there  the  Pope  anointed  him  King,  (heir-appar- 
ent to  the  English  throne),  at  the  request  of  his 
father. 


Coeiir  dc  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  iii 

Think  of  it,  you  travellers  through  the  Alps  by 
tunnels,  that  you  may  go  to  balls  at  Rome  or  hells  at 
Monaco.  Here  is  another  manner  of  journey,  another 
goal  for  it,  appointed  for  your  little  king.  At  twelve, 
he  was  already  the  best  hunter  among  the  Saxon 
youths.  Be  sure  he  could  sit  his  horse  at  five.  Fancy 
the  child,  with  his  keen  genius,  and  holy  heart,  riding 
with  his  Saxon  chiefs  beside  him,  by  the  Alpine  flow- 
ers under  Velan  or  Sempione,  and  down  among  the 
olives  to  Pavia,  to  Perugia,  to  Rome  ;  there,  like  the 
little  fabled  Virgin,  ascending  the  Temple  steps,  and 
consecrated  to  be  King  of  England  by  the  great  Leo, 
Leo  of  the  Leonine  city,  the  saviour  of  Rome  from 
the  Saracen. 

^Two  years  afterwards,  he  rode  again  to  Rome 
beside  his  father ;  the  West  Saxon  king  bringing 
presents  to  the  Pope,  a  crown  of  pure  gold  weighing 
four  pounds,  a  sword  adorned  with  pure  gold,  two 
golden  images,*  four  Saxon  silver  dishes;  and  giving 
a  gift  of  gold  to  all  the  Roman  clergy  and  nubles,t 
and  of  silver  to  the  people. 

No    idle   sacrifices  or  symbols,    these   gifts   of  cour- 

*  Turner,  Book  IV.,— not  a  vestif,'e  of  hint  from  the  stupid  Englishman,  what 
the  Pope  wanted  with  crown,  sword,  or  image!  My  own  guess  would  be,  that 
it  meant  an  offering  of  the  entire  household  strength,  in  war  and  peace,  of  the 
Sa;:on  nation,— their  crown,  their  sword,  their  household  gods,  Irminsul  and 
Irminsula,   their   fcristing,   and    their   robes. 

t  Again,  what  does  this  mean  ?  Gifts  of  honour  to  the  Pope's  immediate 
attendants  silver  to  all  Rome?  Does  the  modern  re.ider  think  this  is  buying 
little   Alfred's  consecration   too  dear,   or   that    Leo   is   selling   the    Holy   Ghost? 


112  The  Pleasures  of  Fmtcy. 

tesy !  The  Saxon  King  rebuilt  on  the  highest  hill 
that  is  bathed  by  Tiber,  the  Saxon  street  and  school, 
the  Borgo,*  of  whose  miraculously  arrested  burning 
Raphael's  fresco  preserves  the  story  to  this  day.  And 
further  he  obtained  from  Leo  the  liberty  of  all  Saxon 
men  from  bonds  in  penance  ; — a  first  phase  this  of 
Magna  Charta,  obtained  more  honourably,  from  a 
more  honourable  person,  than  that  document,  by 
which  Englishmen  of  this  day,  suppose  they  live, 
move,  and  have  being. 

How  far  into  Alfred's  soul,  at  seven  years  old,  sank 
any  true  image  of  what  Rome  was,  and  had  been  ; 
of  what  her  Lion  Lord  was,  who  had  saved  her  from 
the  Saracen,  and  her  Lion  Lord  had  been,  who  had 
saved  her  from  the  Hun  ;  and  what  this  Spiritual 
Dominion  was,  and  was  to  be,  which  could  make  and 
unmake  kings,  and  save  nations,  and  put  armies  to 
flight  ;  I  leave  those  to  say,  who  have  learned  to  rever- 
ence childhood.  This,  at  least,  is  sure,  that  the  days 
of  Alfred  were  bound  each  to  each,  not  only  by  their 
natural  piety,  but  by  the  actual  presence  and  appeal 
to  his  heart,  of  all  that  was  then  in  the  world  most 
noble,  beautiful,  and  strong  against  Death. 

In  this  living  Book  of  God  he  had  learned  to  read, 

*  "  Quae  in  eorum  lingua  Burgus  dicitur,— the  place  where  it  was  situated 
was  camd  the  Saxon  street,  Saxonum  vicum  "  (Anastasius,  quoted  by  Turner). 
There  seems  to  me  some  evidence  in  the  scattered  passages  I  have  not  time 
to  collate,  that  at  this  time  the  Saxon  Burg,  or  tower,  of  a  village,  included  the 
idea  of  its  school. 


Cocur  de  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  113 

thus  early;  and  with  perhaps  nobler  ambiticMi  than 
of  getting  the  prize  of  a  gilded  psalm-book  at  his 
mother's  knee,  as  you  are  commonly  told  of  him. 
What  sort  of  psalm-book  it  was,  however,  you  may 
see  from  this  leaf  in  my  hand.  For,  as  his  father 
and  he  returned  from  Rome  that  year,  they  stayed 
again  at  the  Court  of  Charlemagne's  grandson,  whose 
daughter,  the  Princess  Judith,  Ethelwolf  was  wooing 
for  Queen  of  England,  (not  queen-consort,  merely,  but 
crowned  queen,  of  authority  equal  to  his  own.)  From 
whom  Alfred  was  like  enough  to  have  had  a  reading 
lesson  or  two  out  of  her  feither's  Bible ;  and  like 
enough,  the  little  prince,  to  have  stayed  her  hand  at 
this  bright  leaf  of  it,  the  Lion-leaf,  bearing  the  symbol 
of' the  Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah. 

You  cannot,  of  course,  see  anything  but  the  glit- 
tering from  where  you  sit ;  nor  even  if  you  afterwards 
look  at  it  near,  will  you  find  a  figure  the  least  admi- 
rable or  impressive  to  you.  It  is  not  like  Landsecr's 
Lions  in  Trafalgar  Square  ;  nor  like  Tennicl's  in 
'  Punch '  ;  still  less  like  the  real  ones  in  Regent's 
Park.  Neither  do  I  show  it  you  as  admirable  in  any 
respect  of  art,  other  than  that  of  skilfullest  illumina- 
tion. I  show  it  you,  as  the  most  interesting  Gothic 
type  of  the  imagination  of  Lion ;  which,  after  the 
Roman  Eagle,  possessed  the  minds  of  all  European 
warriors ;  until,  as  they  themselves  grew  selfish  and 
cruel,  the    symbols  which    at    first   meant    heaven-sent 


114  ^^^^'  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

victory,  or  the  strength  and  presence  of  some  Divine 
spirit,  became  to  them  only  the  signs  of  their  own 
pride  or  rage  :  the  victor  raven  of  Corvus  sinks  into 
the  shamed  falcon  of  Marmion,  and  the  lion-hearted- 
ness  which  gave  the  glory  and  the  peace  of  the  gods 
to  Leonidas,  casts  the  glory  and  the  might  of  king- 
hood  to  the  dust  before  Chalus.* 

That  death,  6th  April,  1199,  ended  the  advance  of 
England  begun  by  Alfred,  under  the  pure  law  of  Re- 
ligious Imagination.  She  began,  already,  in  the  thir- 
teenth century,  to  be  decoratively,  instead  of  vitally, 
religious.  The  history  of  the  Religious  Imagination 
expressed  between  Alfred's  time  and  that  of  Coeur  de 
Lion,  in  this  symbol  of  the  Lion  only,  has  material  in 
it  rather  for  all  my  seven  lectures  than  for  the  clos- 
ing section  of  one  ;  but  I  must  briefly  specify  to  you 
the  main  sections  of  it.  I  will  keep  clear  of  my  fa- 
vourite number  seven,  and  ask  you  to  recollect  the 
meaning  of  only  Five,  Mythic  Lions. 

First  of  all,  in  Greek  art,  remember  to  keep  your- 
selves clear  about  the  difference  between  the  Lion 
and  the  Gorgon. 

The  Gorgon  is  the  power  of  evil  in  heaven,  con- 
quered by  Athena,  and  thenceforward  becoming  her 
aegis,  when  she  is  herself  the  inflictor  of  evil,  Hef 
helmet  is  then  the  helmet  of  Orcus. 

*  '  Fors  Clavigera,  March,  1871,  p.  19.  Yet  read  the  preceding:  pages,  and 
learn  the  truth  of  the  lion  heart,  while  you  mourn  its  pride.  Note  especially 
his  absolute  law  against  usury. 


CcviiJ^  dc  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  115 

But  the  Lion  is  the  power  of  death  on  earth,  con- 
quered by  Heracles,  and  becoming  thenceforward  both 
his  helmet  and  aegis.  All  ordinary  architectural  lion 
sculpture  is  derived  from  the  Heraclean. 

Then  the  Christian  Lions  are,  first,  the  Lion  of  the 
Tribe  of  Judah — Christ  Himself  as  Captain  and  Judge: 
"  He  shall  rule  the  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron,"  (the 
opposite  power  of  His  adversary,  is  rarely  intended 
in  sculpture  unless  in  association  with  the  serpent 
— "  inculcabis  supra  leonem  et  aspidem");  secondly, 
the  Lion  of  St.  Mark,  the  power  of  the  Gospel  going 
out  to  conquest ;  thirdly,  the  Lion  of  St.  Jerome,  the 
wrath  of  the  brute  creation  changed  into  love  by  the 
kindness  of  man  ;  and,  fourthly,  the  Lion  of  the  Zo- 
diac, which  is  the  Lion  of  Egypt  and  of  the  Lombardic 
pillar-supports  in  Italy ;  these  four,  if  you  remember, 
with  the  Nemean  Greek  one,  five  altogether,  will  give 
you,  broadly,  interpretation  of  nearly  all  Lion  symbol- 
ism in  great  art.  How  they  degenerate  into  the 
British  door  knocker,  I  leave  you  to  determine  for 
yourselves,  with  such  assistances  as  I  may  be  able  to 
suggest  to  you  in  my  next  lecture ;  but,  as  the  gro- 
tesqueness  of  human  history  plans  it,  there  is  actually 
a  connection  between  that  last  degradation  of  tlie 
Leonine  symbol,  and  its  first  and  noblest  signifi- 
cance. 

You  see  there  are  letters  round  this  golden  Lion 
of  Alfred's  s{)eliing-b(iok,  which  his  princess  friend  waM 


ii6  The  Pleasures  of  Fancy. 

likely   enough  to  spell  for  him.      They  are  two  Latin 
hexameters : — 

Hie  Leo,  surgendo,  portas  confregit  Averni 
Qui  nunquam  dormit,  nusquam  dormitat,  in  asvutn. 
(This  Lion,  rising,  burst  the  gates  of  Death  : 
Tliis,  who  sleeps  not,  nor  shall  sleep,  for  ever.) 

Now  here  is  the  Christian  change  of  the  Heraclean 
conquest  of  Death  into  Christ's  Resurrection.  Sam- 
son's bearing  away  the  gates  of  Gaza  is  another  like 
symbol,  and  to  the  mind  of  Alfred,  taught,  whether 
by  the  Pope  Leo  for  his  schoolmaster,  or  by  the  great- 
granddaughter  of  Charlemagne  for  his  schoolmistress, 
it  represented,  as  it  did  to  all  the  intelligence  of 
Christendom,  Christ  in  His  own  first  and  last.  Alpha 
and  Omega,  description  of  Himself, — 

"  I  am  He  that  liveth  and  was  dead,  and  behold  I 
am  alive  for  evermore,  and  have  the  keys  of  Hell  and 
of  Death."  And  in  His  servant  St.  John's  description 
of  Him — 

"  Who  is  the  Faithful  Witness  and  the  First-begotten 
of  the  dead,  and  the  Prince  of  the  kings  of  the  earth." 

All  this  assuredly,  so  far  as  the  young  child,  conse- 
crated like  David,  the  youngest  of  his  brethren,  con- 
ceived his  own  new  life  in  Earth  and  Heaven, — he 
understood  already  in  the  Lion  symbol.  But  of  all 
this   I  had   no  thought*  when   I   chose   the    prayer  of 

*  The  reference  to  the  Bible  of  Charles  le  Chauve  was  added  to  my  second 
lecture  (j  age  54),  in  correcting  the  press,  mistakenly  put  into  the  text  instead 
of  the  notes. 


\ 


Ccettr  de  Lio7i  to  Elizabeth.  1 1  7 

Alfred  as  the  type  of  the  Religion  of  his  era,  in  its 
dwelling,  not  on  the  deliverance  from  the  punishment 
ot  sin,  but  from  the  poisonous  sleep  and  death  of  it. 
Will  you  ever  learn  that  prayer  again, — youths  who 
are  to  be  priests,  and  knights,  and  kings  of  England, 
in  these  the  latter  days?  when  the  gospel  of  Eternal 
Death  is  preached  here  in  Oxford  to  you  for  the 
Pride  of  Truth?  and  "the  mountain  of  the  Lord's 
House"  has  become  a  Golgotha,  and  the  "new  song 
before  the  throne  "  sunk  into  the  rolling  thunder  of 
the  death  rattle  of  the  Nations,  crying,  "  O  Christ, 
where  is  Thy  Victory !  " 

NOTES. 

I."  The  Five  Christmas  Days.  (These  were  dra^vn  out  on 
a  large  and    conspicuous  diagram.) 

These  days,  as  it  happens,  sum  up  the  History  of  their 
Five  Centuries. 

Christmas  Day,      496.     Clevis  baptized, 

"  "  <Soo.     Cliarlcmange  crowned. 

"  "        1 04 1.     Vow    of    the    Count    of 

Aversa  (Page  80). 
"  "        1066.     The  Con(iueror  crowned. 

"  "        1 130.     Roger  II.  crowned  King 

of  the  Two  Sicilies. 

2.  For  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  two  i)ictures  were 
shown  and  commented  on — the  two  must  perfect  pictures  in 
the   worhl. 


T 1 8  The  Pleas2i7'cs  of  Fancy. 

(i)  A  small  piece  from  Tintoret's  Paradise  in  the  Ducal 
Palace,  representing  the  group  of  St.  Ambrose,  Si.  Jerome, 
St.  Gregory,  St.  Augustine,  and  behind  St.  Augustine  his 
mother  watching  him,  her  chief  joy  even  in  Paradise. 

(2)  The  Arundel  Society's  reproduction  of  the  Altar- 
piece  by  Giorgione  in  his  native  hamlet  of  Castel  Franco. 
The  Arundel  Society  has  done  more  for  us  than  we  have 
any  notion   of. 


■VII   «-ru.UWII/K/  <CN"'   vru.1  •  \/ii/)jy> 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

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LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1 388 

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